


The Name I'll Give to Thee

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Forced Marriage, Gen, M/M, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 45
Words: 180,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry just saved the world—again. But he did it by pulling on the magic and lives of all the wizards tied to him, and the Malfoys had the most to lose. Now Draco is demanding the ancient payment of such a debt: that Harry become a Malfoy, in name and life and tradition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For Passion, For Pride

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slow-moving story, and pretty angsty, especially at the beginning. The title comes from a variation on a line in the poem “Be Mine, and I Will Give Thy Name” by William Cox Bennett.

They came out of the ground. They came out of the water. They came floating down from the air, and although they burned in fire, that was not enough to stop them. Humans could not live in fire, must venture outside it sometimes, and so they came, and so they touched humans, and so they died.  
  
They were the ghosts of Dementors, which the Ministry had slaughtered two years ago, and they took the place of human souls and mutilated their bodies, and so they died.  
  
The Ministry fought. The Aurors fought. The war wizards fought. Even the Muggles fought, in their dim and misunderstanding way. But no one could stop them, and so they died.  
  
And so once again it fell to Harry Potter to save the world.  
  
*  
  
Harry felt himself flying before he began to fall.  
  
He had created the spell, or he and Hermione and Ron had, their brains working at fever pitch and pace, their hands weaving together words and pages from books and random, wild ideas until they knew that it would work. It was as much ritual as spell, and both Hermione and Ron had freely offered their magic for Harry to draw on.   
  
Harry had thought it would be enough. Why not? These were his best friends, and they had always been enough before. They’d walked with him on the Horcrux hunt and gone after the Philosopher’s Stone and into the Chamber of Secrets. Maybe he was always alone at the end, the way he’d been before the basilisk and the mirror and in the Forbidden Forest, but they could help him get there.  
  
The ritual  _should_ have worked. It should have allowed Harry to spread pure life-force out into the world—or at least this little section of isolated and rocky promontory, where they had already created a trap to draw the Dementor ghosts. The ghosts could take over lives that were inside human bodies, but should, at least according to Hermione’s research, be vulnerable to life-force spread outside that. They were creatures of death and despair, and life-force was vitality, was joy.  
  
But it wasn’t enough, because the ghosts were swarming, and Harry had never realized how  _many_ there were, how deep they massed, how they would move towards him in grey swarms and try to suck him dry.  
  
He imagined it, imagined the way they would torment Hermione and Ron by making his body die in creative ways. Then he imagined them taking Hermione and Ron, and other people after that, and  _finally,_ he reached into his rage and produced a magic as deep and bright as the Dementors were deep and grey.  
  
The magic shook and rocked and rang him, and gave him wings to fly with once again. Harry screamed, and let the life-force pour out of him, through his eyes and nose and mouth and ears, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, beneath his nails, any place that it could find an opening. It was more than just his, he thought dimly.  
  
He had managed to draw on Ron and Hermione, he thought then, to create this brilliant white fire, born of all three of them, that raced across the sky and scoured the dead Dementors, lit them like matches and burned them all away, at last, the way the Ministry had thought it had done. Harry would have been worried about another false victory, but he could  _feel_ them dying, their shrieks as they faded, how they tried to flee and the ghosts late in arriving caught death like a disease from their wisping fellows, and Harry laughed aloud and dropped to his knees, nearly breaking his legs with the force.  
  
He lifted his head and watched them fleeing, dead in the lightning. Maybe the essentially random mark on his forehead had had a hidden meaning after all.  
  
Ron and Hermione crawled up around him and took him in their arms. Harry turned his head and hugged them, his arms around their shoulders, their waists, anything he could reach.  
  
They panted, and they rocked, and they lay there, and Harry finally lifted his head and smiled at them. “You were right, Hermione,” he said. “I couldn’t do it alone. But you were wrong about needing to bring other people.” He could do that, now, tease her about being wrong, when the fate of the world wasn’t riding on it anymore.  
  
Hermione looked at him and bit her bottom lip. “I don’t think it was just us, Harry,” she whispered. “There was—too much. Too much life-force, I mean. We couldn’t have contributed it just by ourselves, or we would be dead.”  
  
Harry shook his head at her, refusing the sadness he thought she was trying to drape over him. “But that can’t be right. There was no one else in the ritual. No one else could have shared with me. Maybe we’re just more powerful than we thought, or being close to death so many times made it stronger, or something.” Hermione had read one of the books they’d prepared the ritual out of that suggested that might happen.  
  
“I—don’t know,” Hermione said, her hands twisting together. “Most of the time, you’re right, nothing like that could have happened, because everyone else would be too distant to help us even if they wanted to. But I wonder. So many people are connected to you, Harry. The Weasleys adopted you, and the rest of the wizarding world worships you.”  
  
“Sometimes,” Harry reminded her.  
  
That wasn’t enough to stop Hermione. Of course, mere words had never been enough to stop Hermione. She said, “Yes, but right now it’s mostly worship. They trusted that you would do something to save them the moment you proposed it, and they haven’t turned away from that. I wonder…” She stood up and shook out her robes. “I think we need to get back, and see what happened.”  
  
Harry turned to look back at the empty sky and ground one more time before they Apparated.  _He_ knew what had happened. The world was at peace and safe, again. The Dementor ghosts were gone.  
  
And no one had better ask him for anything else that he didn’t feel like granting, ever again.  
  
*  
  
Harry woke up with a twist and a jerk. He had gone to bed the minute he got back home, and it really wasn’t any wonder, when he’d been up all night preparing for the ritual, and nights before that had barely any sleep as they stumbled through book after book, hoping for a cure.  
  
But the pounding that had woken him didn’t let up, and Harry was worried about what might happen to his door if he didn’t open it. He fell out of bed and limped across the room, muttering and promising himself that he could return to sleep as soon as he’d dealt with this.  
  
When he opened the door, Hermione fell into his arms. Harry staggered under the weight, shook sleep and his recent promise out of his mind, and carefully dragged her into the drawing room, while watching over her shoulder in case someone else came charging up behind her. But his house was isolated, on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, and surrounded by wards that would only let Hermione or one of the Weasleys through. The chance that someone would be pursuing her was, he had to admit, small.  
  
“What happened?” he whispered, letting her down gently to the ground and stroking her shoulders. “Hermione? Are you all right?”  
  
Hermione caught her breath and closed her eyes, lying there so still that Harry reached out to check her heartbeat. Then she startled him even more by opening her eyes and noisily bursting into tears.  
  
“ _Hermione_.” Harry hugged her again, pulling her close to him, smoothing his hands up and down her back and wishing he knew what to do. He had never seen her taken apart like this.  
  
 _Which must mean that I took life-force from more people after all, and I’m probably a murderer._  
  
Harry gulped, and shivered. Then he reached out for the strength that had sustained him in the years since the war. Sometimes he used that strength against threats, the way that he had with the Dementor ghosts, but other times, he just used it to support the burden of living with his memories, and his grief, and the wizarding world howling after him ever since Voldemort died. It looked, now, like he might need it to do both.  
  
 _If I killed someone, then I’ll pay the price. Azkaban might be—nice. Without the Dementors. Kind of soothing._  
  
Hermione finally stopped crying, and Harry pushed her hair back from her eyes. “What is it?” he whispered. “Is it Ron?” It had suddenly occurred to him how stupid it was for him to automatically think everything came back to him, and when Ron wasn’t with her… He stood up, looking frantically around.  
  
“Ron is fine.” Hermione wiped her nose with the back of her hand, at least until Harry Summoned a box of tissues and held it out to her. Then she blew her nose with a murmured thanks and shook her head. “And I don’t think—I don’t think that he could do anything about this anyway. Oh, Harry, it’s so  _awful_ …”  
  
Harry swallowed. Yeah, it had something to do with what they had done, or what he had done. He had been the one to yank that strength from other people. Someone was probably dead because of him.  
  
He got Hermione settled in the largest and softest red chair in the middle of his drawing room and sat down across from her, rubbing her hands. “Tell me. Please.”  
  
Hermione hesitated a bit more, then nodded. “All right,” she said, and blew her nose again. “I don’t think anyone died. But the Burrow—it’s almost gone, Harry. And George collapsed in the joke shop this morning, and although he’s fine physically, they can’t get him to wake up.”  
  
Harry stared at her, and wondered for a moment where his wand was.  
  
“He’s going to wake up in a few days, the Healers say,” Hermione finished quickly. Harry relaxed and leaned back. “It seems to be the life-force of the people who were closest to you. Ron and I are all right, because we had the ritual to protect us and we knew how to brace ourselves. But you’ve spent an awful lot of time with George in the past few years, and he didn’t know what was going on.”  
  
Harry nodded. “What about Teddy?” He wondered if he should be grateful, now, that Tonks and Remus had made him Teddy’s godfather just by naming him that way, without the magical ritual that was sometimes performed.  
  
“Fine,” Hermione said, with a fleeting smile that said she loved him for asking, and Harry smiled back, loving her for checking. “Andromeda fell down and had a mild seizure at the exact time you pulled on all that life-force, though. The Healers think that she’ll recover in time, but it’ll take longer than it did for George.”  
  
“Of course,” Harry echoed softly. “She’s older, after all.”  
  
Hermione squeezed his hand. They both knew that Andromeda’s age wasn’t the major reason why it would probably take her longer to recover.  
  
Harry shook his head. “I need to—to talk to George, and the Weasleys, and Andromeda. I need to find out what I can do for them.”  
  
Hermione looked at him, then nodded. Harry could see the exact moment when she decided that it wouldn’t be worth it for her to oppose him. “Of course,” she said, getting up. “George is in St. Mungo’s, and Andromeda is at home with Molly and Teddy. Where would you like to go first?”  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned back against the wall next to George’s bed, and rubbed his eyes. The Healers said that George looked better than when Ron had first brought him in, with color creeping back into his cheeks and his breathing no longer the loud, rumbling pants that it had been.  
  
Harry could only say that if George looked better, he wouldn’t have wanted to see him when he was first there.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, while George went on breathing and the monitoring spells went on working and no one else was in the room. “I didn’t mean to do something like that, but it was no excuse. I should have thought about what would happen when I reached out for extra life-force, and it didn’t come. I should have come up with a different plan that wouldn’t rely on risks like that, because Ron and Hermione and I just didn’t have enough.”  
  
George didn’t respond, of course, and neither did anyone else. But Harry reached out and took George’s hand, squeezing hard.  
  
“I should have done something different,” he whispered. “I cost—well, the cost could have been a lot worse, but what happened is bad enough. If you need any help when you’re up and about, let me know. I can help in the joke shop, make you tea, test out pranks. Whatever you want.”  
  
“Do you mean that?”  
  
Harry leaped to his feet, eyes fastened on George’s face, and only then realized that George hadn’t been the one who said that. He turned, instead, and found Malfoy leaning against the open door of George’s room, staring at him.  
  
Harry hadn’t seen Malfoy in five years, since the day in the Great Hall after the battle. There were all sorts of rumors about what Malfoy had chosen to do after that, like going to Durmstrang or hiring a private Dark Arts tutor or hunting down the remaining Death Eaters, but he hadn’t come back to Hogwarts. Harry had technically testified at his trial, but it was really Lucius’s trial, and Draco and his mother were involved in it only by the circumstance of sharing the same last name. Harry had come in, told the Wizengamot what he knew and what Draco and Narcissa had done for him, and then left again without seeing either of them face-to-face.  
  
And if George looked awful, Malfoy looked like the walking dead, like someone possessed by a Dementor ghost that hadn’t been destroyed. His face and his hair were almost the same shade, and his fingers twitched constantly, down by his side. His nostrils randomly flared open and shut in the same way, as though he couldn’t control them. Harry swallowed.  
  
Hermione hadn’t thought to look for victims outside his immediate friends and family. Why would she? His connection with them was closest, making them the most likely victims.  
  
But Harry had forgotten the life-debts that bound him to the Malfoy family. Or preferred not to think of them, since he thought he had done all he could for the ones he owed by testifying for Draco and Narcissa, and he never intended to claim the ones they owed him.  
  
“What happened?” Harry whispered. “What did I do to you?”  
  
Malfoy nodded, a motion so quick that Harry thought he would have missed it if he had glanced away. “Good,” Malfoy murmured. “That at least reassures me, that you are willing to take the blame for it.” He pushed off the doorframe, never looking away; Harry wasn’t sure that he had blinked yet. “Come with me, and we’ll see if you meant what you said, about being willing to do anything to heal the hurts you inflicted.”  
  
His words should have sounded ridiculous, Harry thought as he followed Malfoy, the way Malfoy’s words had always sounded in the past when he got dramatic. He wasn’t  _meant_ for grand gestures; they always went wrong on him, like the time he had tried to ambush Harry by pretending to be a Dementor.  
  
But this time, those words sounded like winter. This time, Harry was inclined to think that Malfoy did know what he was talking about.  
  
And that Harry might have done the kind of harm he couldn’t repair, except perhaps with sacrifice.  
  
*  
  
“When the magic came,” Malfoy began, sitting in the middle of one of the small scrubby rooms that St. Mungo’s set aside for grieving family members, his hands folded on the wrought-iron table between them, “my mother fell.”  
  
Harry swallowed, and stirred some more sugar into his tea, even though he didn’t usually like it that way and had no intention of drinking it. He wanted to say that there was no reason for that, because Narcissa wasn’t as old as Andromeda and hadn’t had to bear the crushing weight of grief for losing three members of her family in the war that Andromeda did.  
  
But the life-debt that tied them was probably a different kind of connection, and Narcissa  _had_ had her husband go to Azkaban for life. Perhaps that was enough.  
  
“What happened to her?” Harry asked, bracing himself with one leg curled around the leg of his chair.  
  
Malfoy eyed him in silence for a moment, then nodded. “You  _do_ seem ready to bear the consequences of your actions,” he murmured. “My mother literally fell, and then when she got back up, she had aged fifty years. In body, and in mind. She’s on the near side of senility now, Potter.” His eyes were bright and hard, and Harry knew how much he must have struggled not to weep. “The Healers tell me the magical aging can be reversed and she can be cured, but it will take time and money.”  
  
He paused to drink his own tea, then put the cup down and gazed directly at Harry. “Time that I don’t have, since the wards on the Manor shattered as well. You took magic from us, along with life-force.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes, opened them. “You’re afraid your father’s enemies might come after you, with the wards down.”  
  
Malfoy nodded. “As soon as they hear of it, which thankfully hasn’t happened yet. And I don’t have the funds to pay private Healers to work on my mother, either, since the Ministry took so much money in reparations.” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and set it on the table between them.  
  
Harry stared again. It was the hawthorn wand, but shattered like a tree struck by lightning, carved up and down with blackness, split at the bottom and barely clinging to its dangling halves.  
  
“Yes, you did that,” Malfoy said, when Harry met his eyes again. “The wand was connected to you, part of it always belonged to you even after you gave it back to me, and there’s no—” His jaw trembled; then he clenched it shut. “If not for the Floo network, I couldn’t even have  _got_ here, Potter. And it’ll take me at least a year to bond with a new wand and train back up to my former level.”  
  
Harry swallowed. He understood the picture Malfoy was trying to paint him better than Malfoy could possibly have known. Pinned, surrounded by enemies, no defense possible, was the way he had felt sometimes among the Dursleys.  
  
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said at last.  
  
Malfoy slammed his hand into the table hard enough to make the hawthorn wand fly up and almost fall on the floor. Harry recoiled before he could help himself, and then cast a quick spell that snatched the wand up and put it back into place. A Healer looked around the door of the small room, but by then Harry had already curled his arm in a direction that would hide the wand, and smiled at the Healer.  
  
“We’re fine,” he said. “Just…” And he lowered his eyes and thought about George, about Andromeda, about Narcissa, about what he had done.  
  
The Healer, probably used to more violent displays of grief, nodded and withdrew. Harry huffed out a breath and turned back to Malfoy, who was staring at him.  
  
“This may work after all,” Malfoy said. “That was an impressive bit of lying, Potter.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Lots of things have changed in five years.” He leaned forwards. “I take it that you don’t want my apologies. What is it you want? All the money I have is yours, if you want, to buy a wand and get Healers and rebuild your wards.”  
  
“Ultimately,” Malfoy drawled, leaning back in his chair and letting his arm dangle over the back, “that wouldn’t help. There would almost certainly be someone among the people we hired who would betray us before the new wards were enacted or I was good enough with my wand. No.” He leaned in, eyes burning. “I want you.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “You want my life?” He had heard of some old pure-blood laws that insisted someone who deeply wronged a family should be executed for it, but it seemed useless for Malfoy to ask for that; among other things, he and his mother weren’t the ones who would inherit Harry’s money if Harry died.  
  
Malfoy laughed, deep and low, rumbling. “In a  _sense,_ Potter. In the old days, if someone did something like this, inflicted harm without actually costing a life, he gave over his life in return. But not by death. Death was only in return for death. If my mother had died…” He stretched his hand out. “But she didn’t. I want you, Potter. To become part of my family, to join your money to ours, your strength to ours. With someone as strong as you in residence, our enemies are less likely to attack. And, yes, Malfoy money could go to repair the wards and hire Healers then.”  
  
Harry sat there in silence, and then said, “You want me to become a Malfoy?”  
  
“You’ve gained some eloquence, too,” Malfoy mused, leaning back and lifting a leg to cross it over the other one. “This won’t be as unbearable as I was fearing.”  
  
“All right,” Harry said, forcing the words through numb lips. He hated the thought, but he had said  _anything,_ hadn’t he? The Ministry didn’t have the right to ask more of him, because he had bloody saved the bloody world again and again, but it wasn’t the Ministry he had hurt.  
  
He did, though, have to remind Malfoy of something. “Are you sure that you want a half-blood in your family? I can—I can change my name and give you the money and everything else, but I can’t change my blood.”  
  
Malfoy smiled slowly, his lips drawing back from his teeth so that he looked like a vampire. “Oh, I know that, Potter,” he whispered. “But in this case, fame and power and magical strength outweigh your muddy blood. It’s not widely-known, but some members of my family did this in the past—adopted a half-Muggle cousin as an heir, for example, because the cousin’s power shone so pure and bright.” He reached across the table, and Harry kept still, thinking he was reaching for the wand, until he caught and crushed Harry’s hand in an unrelenting grip. “You’re one of the strongest wizards in the world, and a hero  _many_ times over, and rich, and a survivor. Yes, I find you more than acceptable.”  
  
Harry bowed his head, and sat there. This wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he would have chosen.  
  
But then, his choices weren’t always the best ones, either. When they only affected him, it was okay. But George was lying in hospital, and Andromeda was sitting with Molly, and Malfoy’s mother was probably on the verge of death, either because of what Harry had done to her or because people wronged by Lucius would notice the lack of wards on the Manor soon.  
  
He lifted his head. Malfoy was watching him with hollow, hungry eyes.  
  
 _He needs me to believe this,_ Harry realized.  _He knows he can’t force me, that I’m too strong for him. It’s my conscience that he’ll have to use as reins._  
  
Fortunately for Malfoy, unfortunately for Harry, this time his conscience was a whole damn bridle. Apologies weren’t enough, money wasn’t enough. This was a debt that Harry  _could_ repay, in a certain specific way, and he would have to.  
  
Along with doing whatever Andromeda and George asked of him.  
  
But there was a strange peace in that notion. Harry had lived under certain rules most of his life: the Dursleys’, and then the ones at Hogwarts, and the prophecy, and the rules of the Ministry after that, and the ones he’d constructed for himself when he realized how seriously some people took him and would do whatever he asked, even if only jokingly. You held yourself carefully, you walked lightly through the world, when someone would probably kill themselves if you suggested it.  
  
“All right,” he said. “I’m yours.”  
  
He would have said, a few days ago, that he had never seen anything more appalling than Malfoy’s smile, but now he had, and he didn’t resent it.


	2. For Necessity's Sake

“I’ve never heard of a law like that.”  
  
Harry smiled and reached out to Hermione, letting her clench her hand on his arm. He appreciated the way her face tightened, how her nostrils flared and her cheeks turned red. He would need support like that, he thought, to avoid despairing when he went into Malfoy Manor. He could feel resigned now, he could feel that it was a fitting punishment and not different from the rules he’d lived with all his life, but he knew his mind would probably change when he was actually in the middle of the situation.  
  
“I haven’t, either,” Harry said, darting a glance at Malfoy, who once again waited in the doorway of George’s bedroom. He stood with only his profile in view, arms folded, and as long as Harry didn’t make a movement to get away, Harry thought he would largely ignore them. “But I’m not universally familiar with the pure-blood laws, either.”  
  
“If neither of us have ever heard of it, then maybe it isn’t  _real_ ,” Hermione hissed at him.  
  
“I do think that he’s telling the truth about what happened to his family,” Harry told her quietly. “He showed me the cracked wand.” Hermione grimaced; Malfoy had shown it to her, too, although she didn’t appear disposed to believe him about what had happened. “And the way he looked when he came to tell me…no, something happened. If he exaggerated the consequences, I’ll find out soon enough, since he wants me to come back to the Manor.”  
  
Hermione shook her head, hard enough that her curls flew out and stung him, too. “Harry, why are you so willing to give  _in_  like this? You said when we were studying the books to get rid of the Dementors that this was the last time you would ever do something like this, sacrifice your life for someone else, to save someone else.”  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he said, “If the Ministry came to me and asked me to do something, then I would tell them to go fuck themselves. Or if Dumbledore came back from the grave and asked. I did more than enough for him.” He could still feel the pain from Snape’s old memories cutting him, if he thought about it.  
  
Malfoy was looking at him. Harry could tell that already. He wondered if he would get more sensitive as time went on, or less. Living in the same house really ought to make him less sensitive to how Malfoy moved, or at least so one would think.  
  
But Hermione was still waiting, and she was one of his best friends, and the more explosive one would be along any second, and he still had to explain the truth to her.   
  
“I  _want_  to do something for George and Andromeda and the others,” Harry said quietly. “Because what I did cost them, because there was more than one way to do it, and I should have found some other way.”  
  
“I’m the one who knew more about the ritual, and I didn’t know that would happen, either.” Hermione’s hands tightened on his arms. “This feels like another way of martyring yourself, Harry.”  
  
Harry licked his lips. He would hear that accusation more than once, he was sure. He had to explain why it didn’t feel that way.  
  
“I want to do this,” he said at last, helplessly. “I think—it’s because it’s people I know, and owe. The whole wizarding world is a faceless entity that I’ve already saved twice. People I know are different.”  
  
Hermione shut her eyes, and then turned and faced Malfoy. Her hand was on her wand in a way that made Harry move between them. Malfoy turned his face more directly towards them, cheeks still pale, but with a bit more color than before. Harry hoped that his agreement was what had restored the color.  
  
“Harry saved your fucking lives,” Hermione whispered. Harry stared at her; he didn’t think he’d  _ever_ heard Hermione swear that way before. Hermione kept looking at Malfoy, though, so Harry didn’t get to hear her explanation for it. “Why can’t that be  _enough?_ Or else take money from him if he wants to donate it, but don’t take his whole fucking  _life_.”  
  
Malfoy sneered at her, his lips flexing in a more normal way. Yes, Harry’s agreement had changed something, Harry thought, and moved him closer to the person they used to know. “Because that’s not enough, Granger. You can say that we helped him in the saving of our lives, like you and Weasley. But you chose to do it, you  _knew_ about it. Can you understand the way I felt when my wand cracked in my hand and then I realized the wards were down? And then when I heard my mother screaming from upstairs? Not even screaming, _moaning,_ the way a frightened animal moans.” Malfoy’s arms were clenched in front of him, his eyes almost black. “We helped him. We didn’t agree to, but some of our magic and our life went to feed his power. You could probably choose your reward from the Ministry, if you wanted to press it. Well, this is ours.”  
  
Hermione hesitated. Harry nodded. “That’s the way I feel,” he said. “They helped me, they paid the debt. This is paying the debt back.”  
  
“Have you asked him what it means?” Hermione said, her gaze still fixed on Malfoy and her voice so slow and deliberate that Harry looked at her in wonder. “Have you asked him what it  _means,_ that you’ll be a Malfoy and living in his house?”  
  
“Well, the living in his house, for one,” Harry said, wondering why she turned her head and gave him a look of pity. “I know that’s part of it. I assume learning manners so that I don’t embarrass his family in public is another. Being nice to his mother. Helping her recover. Learning all the manners that he wants me to learn, and which fork goes where.” He hesitated, suddenly aware that he’d repeated himself, and turned to Malfoy. “What else?”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were dark again, devouring. Harry braced himself. He’d been looked at like that enough all his life, God knew, and Malfoy had more reason than the crazy fans who thought they were destined to be with Harry to look at him that way. At least Malfoy probably didn’t think he was a hero and perfect. He wouldn’t want to do everything Harry said or slavishly ask for his political opinions.   
  
 _The other way around, if anything._  
  
“You’ll learn the history and genealogy of the Malfoy family,” Malfoy said crisply. “Knowing that is part of what being a Malfoy means. You’ll donate money to the right charitable causes, and make friends with the right people in the Ministry.”  
  
Harry nodded. “As long as you remember that some of the people who are my friends right now will stop being so the minute word gets out that I’m taking your name.”  
  
“ _We_ never will,” Hermione said fiercely, and grabbed his arm.  
  
“I know,” Harry said softly to her, and put his arm around her shoulders, looking steadily at Malfoy.  
  
“I think you underestimate the power and pull your name has,” Malfoy began.  
  
“The power and pull it’s going to lose,” Harry said. “Because I’ll take  _your_ name. And I think that you’re underestimating how fickle the public is. They’ll be happy enough to abandon me the same way as they adored me before. That happened in second year when they all thought I was the Heir of Slytherin, remember?”  
  
Malfoy narrowed his eyes a bit, as though trying to see through a gauzy veil. “You worry too much, Potter.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know for sure that’ll happen, but I think it’s likely. What else is part of being a Malfoy?”  
  
Malfoy continued to look at him. Harry looked back, and kept his arm around Hermione’s shoulder. If Malfoy was about to tell him that he would have to abandon his friends and go around with his nose in the air, ignoring them, then Harry would resist. Perhaps not openly, but he would manage it. He would find a way to help George and Andromeda, and see the Weasleys. He was sure lots of members of Malfoy’s family had done things far more unsavory that their relatives wouldn’t approve of. They might have done them slyly, but then, slyness seemed to be an approved character trait.  
  
Finally, Malfoy cleared his throat. “You would have to spend some time with the house’s wards. Learn to cast spells that you’ve showed an aversion to before. Own house-elves. And so much else—it’s hard to explain without completing the ceremony, Potter.”  
  
“The ceremony,” Harry said. “This would be the adoption ceremony.”  
  
Malfoy stood silent, while Hermione stirred and muttered something indignant about Harry’s parents and Sirius. Harry ignored that. He was Sirius’s legal heir, but he had barely ever lived in Grimmauld Place and he hadn’t used Sirius’s money or taken his name.  
  
And his parents…Harry felt a pang when he thought of the name of Potter vanishing, but truthfully, he couldn’t remember his parents except from one Dementor-inspired memory that he would never see again now that they were all gone. Everything else, like Snape’s recollections of his mum or Hagrid’s photographs, had come from other people originally.   
  
He would hate letting his family go, but he could do it. There were advantages to being an orphan.  
  
“It is a combination,” Malfoy said at last, “of an adoption and a marriage ceremony.”  
  
Hermione spluttered hard enough that Harry was afraid she would have an apoplectic attack. “Harry, you can’t  _marry_ him!” she managed to get out at last. “What about Ginny? What about the family you were going to have?”  
  
Harry bit the left corner of his lip, hard. He wished Hermione hadn’t mentioned Ginny, and not least because Malfoy was looking at him with eyes like the sun. Harry didn’t think Ginny should ever come into the same context as Malfoy’s eyes.  
  
“I haven’t married Ginny yet,” Harry said at last, not taking his gaze away from Malfoy’s. “And Malfoy said that what I would undergo is a  _combination_ of a marriage and an adoption ceremony. I don’t think it can be exactly the same thing, because that wouldn’t leave Malfoy free to marry someone else and have children. And I think he wants to.”  
  
Malfoy half-bowed his head. “Very good, Potter,” he murmured. “I can see that it won’t be hopeless after all.”  
  
 _Yeah, keep telling yourself that,_ Harry thought. Malfoy’s frequent comments about how Harry was smarter than he had supposed, or more educated, or whatever else they really meant, only served to convince Harry that Malfoy was trying to convince himself. He had to do this because he thought it mandated by the circumstances, but he wasn’t happy about it.  
  
 _Who_ would  _be happy about their mother magically aging and their wand breaking and their wards dissolving?_ Harry thought, and was a bit ashamed of himself.  
  
“You would marry into the family,” Malfoy said. “And be adopted as an heir at the same time. One ceremony reinforces the other. With things the way they are, I am unwilling to take the chance that you would ever regard yourself as not part of us.”  
  
Harry just nodded, and waited.  
  
“After five years, the marriage can be annulled,” Malfoy said, after he seemed to realize that Harry wouldn’t say anything. “That would leave us both free to marry someone else and have children. I am tired of there only being a single direct heir. My father was an only child, and my grandfather. I want—something else. With two heirs to have heirs, that situation will end.”  
  
“You can’t marry your  _brother_ ,” Hermione said, sounding revolted.  
  
“You would be shocked at some of what pure-bloods have done in the past, Granger,” Malfoy said, flicking his eyes over to her. “But he would not be considered my brother, the way he would in an ordinary adoption ceremony. In an ordinary marriage ceremony, he would be my consort, unable to contribute to the continuation of the family line if he was not married to me, but this is not that, either. It is a different arrangement, sometimes referred to as a demi-marriage, and the main purpose at the moment is to strengthen the Malfoys and bind Potter in. Children will not be an immediate need, since I will have an heir.”  
  
“But demi-marriage is something different,” Hermione said, taking a step away from Harry’s side. Harry let his arm fall, and rubbed the side of it, in the place, he thought, that he would have had a Dark Mark if he’d been a Death Eater. He felt tired, and cold. “I remember that. It was used between cousins when they wanted to tie some property into the family but didn’t want to stay married forever. They would annul the marriage when they had made other heirs and the Ministry realize that the family had no intention of giving the estate up…” Her voice trailed off.  
  
Malfoy nodded once. “Potter isn’t my direct cousin by blood, but otherwise, it’s the same.”  
  
“It’s still a stupid idea,” Hermione hissed at him. “You have no idea what you’re taking from him, what you’re depriving him of.”  
  
Malfoy extended his empty hand and turned it over. “He took safety from us, and life from my mother, and magic from me. It’s going to be at  _least_ a year before I can exercise any mastery over my wand. That’s enough to kill me, and certainly enough to kill my mother.”  
  
“If someone threatens you, go to the Ministry!” Hermione was waving her hands around. Harry stepped up to her gently and took one of them. If George woke up, he didn’t think his first sight should be Hermione arguing.  
  
“I have,” Malfoy said. “The Ministry doesn’t care. If they did, then I would try Potter for what he did to us and demand a monetary compensation.” He looked at Harry, his eyes dull as ash. “But I can’t.”  
  
Hermione started to say something else, but Malfoy drew breath faster. “Why don’t you ask  _Potter_ what he wants, Granger? Since you’re making yourself into a warrior on his behalf, and he looks less than impressed with you.”  
  
Hermione turned around swiftly enough that Harry winced and dropped his wrenched wrist. “Harry, you can’t really stand this, can you?” she whispered. “You don’t want it. You know better than that. You might have agreed out of guilt, but you would explode later.”  
  
Harry stood there for a few minutes, until he thought both Hermione and Malfoy might  _listen_ to him instead of putting the words they imagined in his mouth. Then he said, “The Ministry dumped all the burden of saving the world on my shoulders again, Hermione. I don’t want to continue working for them. But what else would I do? Sit around the house all day?”  
  
“Do  _something_ other than learn to be prejudiced!” Hermione snapped. “You know you’re always welcome to come and work with me and Ron, you could—”  
  
“I don’t want to work to save house-elves, either,” Harry said. His voice wavered, and he shut his eyes and worked himself back towards dry land, ignoring the way that Malfoy’s stare burned now. So it burned. That was something he would have to get used to, along with everything else. “I’m sorry, Hermione, but I just  _don’t._ That’s another faceless mass. What I want is time to think about things, and heal my friends.” He opened his eyes and looked at Malfoy. “And the people I owe life-debts to.”  
  
Malfoy watched him some more. Hermione said, “Then work in the joke shop. You said you wanted to be with George.”  
  
“I’m going to help him,” Harry said quietly. “That’s different from thinking of the joke shop as a career. I can’t, Hermione. I don’t want to. I’m not good at thinking up pranks. I’m not fast and clever that way.”  _Except when it comes to saving the world._ And he didn’t think Hermione would insult him by saying that part aloud.  
  
Hermione shook her head. “Then—Harry, you’re not seriously considering this as something for  _you_  instead of Malfoy? What would you do if he hadn’t come along and said that he was taking you into his family?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. Something else.” He wished that he didn’t have this burning tiredness all over him, that he’d managed to sleep longer that morning or get some sleep while he was sitting with Andromeda or George. Then his arguments would probably make more sense. “But this is here now, and I want to—I want a chance for some peace, a chance to get away from the Ministry. Malfoy won’t treat me that well, but he can’t treat me that horribly, either, because that would mean I’d break away from him no matter what the cost. So I’ll have a chance, a  _reason,_ to relax for a little while and do something that has nothing to do with saving the world or catching criminals.”  
  
He got to the end, and everyone in the room was staring at him. Except George, who was still asleep. Harry more than half envied him.  
  
Malfoy said, “So you are coming with me for your own reasons. I thought so.”  
  
“That’s  _mental._ ”  
  
Harry blinked and glanced up. Ron stood in the doorway, his hands braced on the sides, as if that was all that kept him from tumbling into the room. He shook his head back and forth, and then blew out so that his fringe flew up and away from his face. He edged towards Harry, hands raised, palms out.  
  
“I didn’t hear everything,” he said, calm and concise, his lips twitching. “But I heard enough to know what Malfoy’s asking, and what you’re saying is that you’ll give it up. For  _him_.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “No. For the reasons that I told you. I’m feeling guilty, but I also want a change. This is a way to change things.”   
  
“You’re not thinking straight,” Ron said soothingly. “I know you’re feeling guilty about George and Andromeda and—and whatever you did to Malfoy, but those people are fine, Harry. They’re  _alive_.”  
  
“My mother won’t be for much longer, Weasley,” Malfoy said. “Unless Potter comes with me and helps her.”  
  
“He could bloody well do that without becoming a part of your bloody  _family_.” Ron whirled around to face Malfoy. “Ask him for money. Harry doesn’t value it all that much anyway. But don’t act as though he needs to give up his freedom and his choices and his future for you.”  
  
“Does anyone care about what I want in all this?” Harry asked the bed.  
  
Hermione moved up beside him, Ron turned around in front of him, and both of them nodded vigorously. “That’s why we’re trying to help you, mate,” Ron added. “I know the laws Malfoy is talking about, but none of them says that you  _have_ to move in with him and help him that way. Just paying the debt with money is enough. And—”  
  
“And I want something that will keep the Ministry from going after me,” Harry said flatly. “For the immediate future, a place to get away from all the interviews and the—the parades, and the speeches, and the fucking  _publicity._ ”  
  
The words came out so raw and ugly that he thought he’d torn his throat. He blinked and touched his mouth, while Ron and Hermione did some more staring.  
  
Malfoy applauded, his fingers just touching, but making more noise than anything else in that supernaturally quiet room. “Well done, Potter,” he said. “You’ve stood up for yourself for one of the first times in your life, and you’re learning how addicting it can be.” He lowered his hands and smiled. “Should I prepare your bedroom?”  
  
“There are other ways,” Hermione whispered.  
  
Harry just looked at her. After the war, she had tried to hide him, she and Ron, in the Burrow and then in a flat Hermione had rented while she prepared to go to Australia and retrieve her parents. It didn’t work. The Ministry was clamorous, and the press roared outside the doors, and finally she’d pleaded with Harry to go out and talk to them because it was the only way that any of them would get any peace.  
  
Hermione flushed. Harry smiled a little. She knew what he meant without him having to say it, and that was a wonderful thing, that showed how close his friends could be to him, even though they were having trouble understanding each other right now.  
  
“That was one time,” she said starkly. “And I’m older now, and I would have more ideas about how to handle the situation.”  
  
Harry shrugged again. “I’d rather not deal with the public at all right now,” he said simply. “Malfoy Manor has thicker walls, and once I start repairing the wards, then it’ll be harder than ever for them to get at me.”  
  
“You will have to go out in public sometimes,” Malfoy and Ron said at the same time, and then glared at each other so hard that Harry gave up on controlling his laughter.  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “But they can make up more stories about me in the meantime, and they’ll be able to move on day by day with no commentary from me. You can make me go out in public, Malfoy,” he added, when he saw Malfoy’s mouth starting to open. “You can’t make me talk.”  
  
“ _Can’t_ I?” Malfoy said, the tip of his tongue just visible between pale pink lips.  
  
“No,” Harry said, and turned his back, which made Malfoy stare a bit. He faced Hermione. “This is better. This is protected. It gives me a focus. It’s a way to make up for what I did. Inadvertently or not,” he added, as Hermione’s jaw set. “Maybe I want it for all the wrong reasons, but I do want it right now.”  
  
“When that becomes five years?” Hermione’s hands were brass bands on his arm. “You heard Malfoy’s terms for the extent of the demi-marriage.”  
  
“Yeah, I did,” Harry said, with a nod. “By five years on, I’ll probably be more resigned to it. Maybe I’ll even like it. Or Malfoy will have realized that he hates me more than he needs me and he’ll have kicked me out.”  
  
He looked back at Malfoy. Malfoy was quiet, but tilted his head to the side and lifted his shoulder a little when Harry examined him.  
  
“I could say many things,” he said meditatively. “At the moment, the best bet seems to be to let you do what you want.”  
  
Harry nodded and touched Hermione’s hand. “You can still do something for me,” he said. “Look up the demi-marriages that people have had in the past and tell me what I need to do. That’ll help me more than the dusty old books that Malfoy probably thinks will.”  
  
He serenely ignored the way Malfoy spluttered. Malfoy could do what he liked, think what he liked, but Harry wasn’t going tamely to the altar.  _Either kind of altar,_ he thought then, and laughed aloud.  
  
As he had known it would, his request reassured Hermione enough to make her kiss his cheek and move back a little. “If that’s what you want,” she said.  
  
“It is,” Harry said, and looked at Ron.  
  
Ron was shaking his head, his eyes as wide and startled as a deer’s. He tried several times to clear his throat, and when he finally could, said, “You—Harry, you’re going to become a Malfoy, and the Malfoys hate us.”  
  
“He can change my behaviors, maybe, and my manners, and my name,” Harry answered Ron, leaning forwards to clasp his hand, not caring that Malfoy stared at them the whole time. “It doesn’t mean that he can change my heart.”  
  
“Becoming a Malfoy involves more changes than you know,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
Harry flashed his teeth at him. “No one who’s ever tried to change my soul has had good success at it, Malfoy. The Ministry couldn’t make me an obedient little puppet, and they had a hell of a lot more people trying for a longer time than I’m going to live with you. Get that part through your head.”  
  
Malfoy fell back a step, and maybe that was what reassured Ron enough to smile and hold onto Harry’s hands. “You know that you’ll always be welcome.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I might have to sneak out to see you, the way that those other old Malfoys sneaked out to see their lovers, but I’ll be there,” he said.  
  
Ron embraced him once, hard, and then half-shoved him towards Malfoy. “Go and learn what you need to learn,” he said, and sat down by George’s bed. “I’ll tell him you were here.”  
  
Harry flipped a salute back to Ron and left the room with Malfoy, nearly leaving him behind before Malfoy increased the speed of his strides to keep up. Malfoy murmured, “I had thought you resigned to this.”  
  
“I’m only resigned until I really  _feel_ that I have to do something,” Harry said, and grinned at him again. “Then I’ll go after it with my whole heart. You know. The way I walked into the Forbidden Forest to let Voldemort kill me.”  
  
Malfoy flinched, and fell silent, though he took over the lead when they got to a turn in the corridor and Harry didn’t know which way to go. Harry fell into step behind him, grimly amused and blackly resigned, at the same moment.  
  
 _No law that says I can’t be both._


	3. To the Gates

“I’ll have to Side-Along you.”  
  
“How, when you can’t Apparate?” Harry asked, keeping his gaze straight ahead. Malfoy had walked a short way from the entrance to St. Mungo’s before he stopped. Harry thought it made more sense to go further, to ensure that as few people as possible knew that the wards had fallen on the Manor. “It would be more likely for me to Side-Along  _you_.”  
  
Silence. Harry turned around, his hand on his wand. He didn’t think Malfoy would attack him, but then again, he thought of all those reassuring comments Malfoy had tried to make to himself. Maybe he wasn’t as confident as he pretended, and clinging instead to the first plan he had come up with, the one that he hoped would make everything better. That meant he might lash out if Harry contradicted him enough.  
  
 _If he does, then I don’t have to become part of this. I want to help him survive. Helping him kill me isn’t part of that._  
  
Malfoy stood there with his lips almost bloodless where he pressed them shut, and his head shaking slightly. Harry waited, and Malfoy finally opened his eyes and looked at Harry bleakly, silently.  
  
“I forgot,” he whispered. “I don’t want to think about it, and I managed to make myself forget that I don’t have to be there for you to get past the wards.”  
  
Harry shrugged a little. “All right. I remember the location well enough.” He held out his arm. “Do you want me to take you just outside the gates?” He hoped Malfoy would say yes. While venturing onto the Manor’s grounds was technically possible now, a location where wards had just vanished didn’t sound safe to Harry. A remnant of magic might linger there, enough to attack enemies who tried that way of coming into the Manor.  
  
Malfoy stepped up next to him and took his arm, never looking away, the way he first had when confronting Harry in George’s hospital room. Harry raised his eyebrows back, and then shut his eyes to concentrate on the Apparition. He knew Malfoy hated having to depend on him, but nothing about this would actually repair Malfoy’s wand. For that, their best bet was to start the demi-marriage and mingle their names and fortunes as soon as they could.  
  
As they vanished, Harry noted with a distant wonder that he didn’t feel tired anymore.  
  
*  
  
They came out of the Apparition with a hard stagger that made Draco want to vomit, both because his stomach was churning and to show his contempt.  _He_ would never have done anything so graceless—  
  
If he’d had a working wand. If Potter hadn’t stolen his magic from him and made it impossible for him to do anything like this for at least a year.  
  
Draco turned and stared at his home for the moment. He’d looked Potter in the eye to show that he wasn’t afraid of him, that he knew Potter was in the weaker position to him comparatively because Potter had agreed to make up for his stupid mistake, but right now, he couldn’t.  
  
Yes, the wards were tattered, but at least it looked as though no one had attacked the house while he was gone. The windows remained whole, and the gates hadn’t been forced. Draco touched the sapphire that hung on a slender silver chain around his neck a moment. It would raise illusions, if necessary, a toy of his father’s that Draco had found among his papers after Lucius went to Azkaban. He had used it to create glamours of wards nearer to the Manor. One couldn’t see them from this far away, though.  
  
Instead, one saw exactly how undefended it was, how much at the mercy of Potter’s agreement they both were, Draco and his mother.  
  
This dependence would turn the air in Draco’s throat to ashes before long. He had to hurry the demi-marriage ceremony before Granger came up with an alternative or Potter got over his fit of guilt.  
  
“Let’s go,” Potter said quietly.  
  
Draco wheeled on him, because what did Potter think they had come here to  _do_  but enter the Manor?  
  
Then he saw the way Potter was crouching, his head turning back and forth, his hand on his wand as though he would break the wood with his grip. Draco relaxed and cocked his head to the side.   
  
“You think that someone’s going to attack you simply because you’re here, Potter?” he asked. “If they haven’t come out to go after my mother yet, then they’re unlikely to attack simply because  _you’re_ here. No one but your friends should know about the agreement that you’ve made with me yet.”  
  
“I think that someone’s going to attack because all your ridiculous peacocks are gone from your lawn, Malfoy,” Potter said, his voice solid as an iron bar. “Or didn’t you notice that?”  
  
Draco turned, blinking. It was true that the grounds were empty of large moving shapes, but it wasn’t something he would have expected Potter to notice, since he hadn’t often been to the Manor. “They were probably frightened by the way the wards snapped out of existence. Come  _on_ , Potter.” He put a hand on his shoulder, and tugged.  
  
Potter came with him, but he was turning his head from side to side still, and his mouth had set. “You can’t assume that,” he said.  
  
“I can,” Draco said. He felt flame prickling up his spine, and he knew his mind was spinning, but he also understood the impulses in his brain, and the words he spoke. He didn’t want to depend on Potter any more than he  _had_ to. He wanted to change the balance of power in the situation as soon as he could. And Potter’s warnings probably came from Auror paranoia more than true observational skills. The papers were always talking about it, how the war had scarred Potter and left him permanently suspicious of the motives of people who only wanted to spend a little time with him. “The peacocks are used to the wards humming around them all the time. They would go and hide if they suddenly vanished. Peacocks are stupid birds, Potter. They can make good guards, but they—”  
  
Then a Disillusionment Charm dropped on the far right side of the gardens, and three wizards came into view. All of them wore hooded cloaks that mimicked the way the Death Eaters had dressed. Two of them turned towards Draco and Potter, and the third set off at a dead run for the house.  
  
Draco began to run in response. He knew even as his heels drummed on the earth that it would do no good, that he had no wand to stop the man, and that the glamours of the wards could only buy a few seconds at most. But he had to go, because he was hearing in his head the cries his mother gave as she lay on the floor and stretched her hand out to him, and she was still in there, all he had left—  
  
A bright orange beam of light stabbed over his shoulder and caught the man ahead of him in the back. His arms flew out, and then he fell to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.  
  
Draco skidded to a stop and turned around. Potter was whipping his wand back and forth in front of him, creating a dazzling barrier of yellow streaks of light that looked as if it might at least slow down the attackers who hammered at him with curses and hexes.  
  
 _It could have been a stray spell. Or one of the people fighting Potter could have decided to turn traitor and taken him down._  
  
But Draco knew the truth. Potter had acted to protect Draco’s home and mother before they had more than the barest agreement between them, before he was constrained by the bonds of the demi-marriage.  
  
Draco shivered. He hated the feeling that was settling over him now, the obligation that would tie him to Potter.  
  
But that would change soon. And in the meantime, Draco had to do something to change  _this_ balance of power.  
  
Without a wand. When even Potter was having trouble handling both opponents at once, although that could be because he had taken a moment to remove the furthest threat from the fight.  
  
Draco shook his head and bore on. He would think of something when he got there.  
  
*  
  
These two men were probably mercenaries, and unless something happened, Harry thought he would lose.  
  
He had done his duty, though, taking out the wizard who could have murdered Narcissa Malfoy and stolen the Malfoy treasures. So no one could say that he wouldn’t die in defense of his new family.  
  
 _Hermione wouldn’t like that, if she heard you saying it._  
  
That caused a distraction, when one of the wizards Harry was fighting threw his wand forwards, and with it a hex that nearly got inside his defenses. Harry shook his head, cursed silently, and returned to the struggle.   
  
He had met mercenaries several times in the years since the war, former Death Eaters or Death Eater supporters who could find little satisfaction in brewing illegal potions or kidnapping wealthy pure-bloods or acting as contract thieves. They needed other people to tell them what to do. They needed to belong to a group, and do Dark magic for money. It was the only thing they were good at, the only skill they had.  
  
And these two worked together better than most he had met. Their spells reinforced one another’s; their shields overlapped. Harry knew he could have battled them to a standstill with Ron beside him, but he still didn’t know if he would have won.  
  
Again that weird peace flooded him. He hadn’t died because he was doing nothing, he thought, as one spell caught him on the wrist and the other above his left eye, sending the blood flowing down. He had died because he simply wasn’t good enough. And the Dementor ghosts were gone. It was all right.  
  
Then Malfoy, like the idiot he was and could be, crashed into the wizard on the left from behind and bore him to the ground in an awkward wrestling hold that Dudley would have laughed at.  
  
His partner swung around and gaped. And Harry Stunned him without a pause, because while he would have been all right with dying, he wanted to live.  
  
Malfoy had rolled away from the other wizard the minute he knocked him down, which showed that he wasn’t insane, just trying to do something without a wand. The man he had hurt started to struggle back to his feet, panting, hair hanging in his eyes.  
  
Even half-blind as Harry was, he made an easy target. Harry murmured another Stunner, and then the red light hit him, and then he was down.  
  
And, just like that, the fight was over, and Harry heard the calls of the white peacocks in the distance as they started to come out of hiding. He grimaced and rolled his eyes.  _Bloody stupid birds. They probably think everything’s all right because they could feel magic being flung around and it reminded them of the wards._  
  
His legs wobbled, and he sat down hard, mopping at the blood on his face. He did manage to cast  _Incarcerous_ on the two wizards in front of him, and then touched his wand to his wrist, only to find that his hand was wobbling so badly he couldn’t keep the wand tip straight. He grimaced and leaned forwards, his forehead on his knees.  
  
“Why don’t you heal yourself, Potter?” From the sound of it, Malfoy had knelt down beside him. “You must know that I can’t do it for you.”  
  
“Too—much magic in too—short a period of time,” Harry said, and he hadn’t planned on those breaks in his sentence, either. He grimaced and shook his head, making blood and sweat fly. “I battled the Dementor ghosts and unleashed that magic, and then I came back home and collapsed into bed, but I didn’t rest long enough before Hermione woke me up. The battle wore me out.”  
  
Malfoy said nothing, but his hand drummed the ground. Then he said, “Why didn’t you cast  _Incarcerous_ on the one near the house?”  
  
Harry snorted and wished that he had a banquet in front of him and a bed behind him. “Because he won’t be waking up until I say so. It’s a curse that imitates the Draught of Living Death.”  
  
“And you invented it, of course.” Malfoy didn’t sound all that happy, as if he thought adding a spell like that to the Malfoy repertoire when it had been invented by someone named Potter in the first place was too much.  
  
“No, Hermione did,” Harry said, and grinned at him, and then bowed his head again with a little gasp. Shudders were working their way up his spine and into the bottom of his stomach. It had been like this during some of his times in Auror training, when he had spent too much energy on spells, trying to impress his teachers.  
  
Well, and because he was young and dumb and spending too many nights drinking with Ron and going without sleep. But he was used to doing that for  _days_ before a reaction this bad happened. He wondered idly if he was already aging, or if the spell to get rid of the Dementor ghosts had drained him more than he knew.  
  
“Well, come into the house,” Malfoy said, his voice dropping another notch in coldness. “Sitting out in front like this will tell our enemies that our strongest defense is weak.”  
  
Harry looked up. “I use more magic right now, and I’ll rupture my liver,” he said. “Maybe my lungs.” Malfoy leaned back from him, lip curling, and Harry laughed breathlessly, because now he was  _sure_ that Malfoy’s disgust came from the notion of blood and inner organs everywhere, rather than the thought of what Harry might suffer. “Why don’t you call one of your house-elves and ask it to help us inside?”  
  
*  
  
Draco’s throat constricted the way that it looked as if Potter’s were doing, and he wanted to slam a fist into something. Preferably Potter’s solar plexus, so that he would get all the pleasure of tearing pain whether or not he used more magic.  
  
He should have been the one to think of that. He should have been the one to take control of the situation when he rushed back to help, rather than simply distracting one of the attackers so that Potter was able to bring down both of them.  
  
He twisted to his feet and called out for Ossy, not taking his eyes from Potter. Potter didn’t seem to notice. His face had fallen on his knees again, although Draco could still see a corner of his cheek under all that dark shaggy hair, and he hadn’t known that human skin  _could_ be the color of ivory.  
  
The house-elf appeared in front of them, the old blue towel around his waist fluttering as he stared, and then he began bowing over and over again when Draco told him what he wanted done. A moment later, pillows streamed out of the house and arranged themselves in a nest beneath Potter’s body. They lifted off the ground, and Potter sighed and sagged back, his eyes shut and his hands clasping his stomach.  
  
“And food,” Draco said. He should have thought of that before—  
  
No,  _Potter_ should have thought of that before. If he knew he was that dangerously exhausted, why hadn’t he insisted on eating something before they left hospital? Draco would never understand the combination of selfishness and self-neglect that Gryffindors exhibited.  
  
“Yes, Master Draco,” Ossy said, and bowed before he vanished. Draco took a deep breath and shook his head. At least the house-elves were bound to his service by blood, which couldn’t change unless someone managed to spill all of it out of his veins and replace it with the blood of another family.  
  
 _It probably runs deeper than that. Or someone would have done it by now to some other pure-blood family, and I would know about it._  
  
Draco straightened, turning to face the bodies of the Stunned and bound wizards. He had to deal with them somehow, but the solution of twenty-four hours ago—waving his wand and floating them into the Manor after Ossy and Potter—wasn’t available to him.  
  
He did create a faint glamour with the sapphire to make it seem as if nothing but bright grass lay there, in case some of their friends were looking for them, and then clapped his hands and called for Affy, the other house-elf. Affy came out, bowed when he saw Draco, and nodded gravely when Draco told him to take all three of their enemies into one of the small sheds at the back of the grounds that his mother used for storing old flowerpots. Draco would alert the Ministry about them, if Potter wanted, but he wasn’t going to risk taking them into the house when there were no wards to prevent their escape or mask what they would really see.  
  
Then he plodded into the house himself, his hands still tightening automatically towards his wand, before he remembered and snatched them back.  
  
He would heal this wound soon, as soon as he could. He would study day and night once he had his new wand, so that he could repair the cracks in his façade.  
  
With Potter, though, he would have to do it in different ways. Potter wouldn’t lose sight of the fact that he had a wand and access to his magic and Draco didn’t. He wouldn’t forget that he had saved Draco’s life again, and created another debt between them.  
  
Draco had to study the demi-marriage ceremony again, and see which words he would have to alter, since this wasn’t a wedding of blood cousins. He would study the adoption ceremony at the same time, and make sure that he knew how to combine them.  
  
That would happen as soon as possible, because it was only when Potter’s name was Malfoy that Draco would find himself back in the superior position again.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry  _must_ eat.”  
  
Harry sat up on the soft couch that Ossy had placed him on, and eyed the house-elf. There was a low table in front of him with cups of coffee and tea and chocolate and milk, and sweet rolls and small rounds of gleaming cake and bowls of ice cream. Apparently Ossy felt it was better to get as many calories into Harry as soon as possible.  
  
He’d never met a house-elf like this one. Ossy was silent and intense and not at all prone to speaking long grumbling sentences, like Kreacher, or excited sharp ones, like Dobby. He stood there and  _stared_ at Harry, and now and again he repeated what he’d already said. It was unnerving.  
  
“Master Harry  _must_ eat.”  
  
Harry shivered a little. He could imagine, with a voice like that, that they would find him some morning face-down in a huge bed in Malfoy Manor, his mouth stuffed full of chocolate crumbs and his eyes pierced with butter knives.  
  
“All right,” he said, and grimaced as he reached for one of the little cups of hot chocolate. The silver of the small cup gleamed, and the handle was so delicate that it looked as if it was made of a shell. He really didn’t trust Malfoy’s claim that his family had no money when they could have made a lot of it by selling this. “But I need some meat, okay? And some sandwiches. Things that are  _ordinary_.”  
  
Ossy stiffened as though Harry had asked him to put on socks. “There being no ordinary things in Malfoy Manor,” he said. “Least of all Master Harry.”  
  
Harry stared at him a few seconds more, then shook his head. It was probably best not to anger a house-elf as strange as this one. “Fine, whatever,” he said. “But could you bring me something a little more substantial? Swan stuffed with larks’ tongues, or whatever unordinary meat you have.”  
  
Ossy turned his head slowly from side to side, giving Harry the gaze from first one eye and then the other. “Master Harry must learn the truth,” he said, and vanished.  
  
Harry gave up and lay down on the couch. He reckoned he shouldn’t be surprised that Malfoy had a house-elf who sounded like Trelawney. All their house-elves were probably unusual in some way.  
  
 _Dobby_.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He would have to get over those memories twitching in the back of his head that were trying to remind him Dobby had died to help them escape this place, and Hermione had been tortured here. That was true, and it would never go away, it would never stop being true, in the way that the past didn’t.  
  
But so what? He was going to have to live here, and if Malfoy found out that he avoided certain rooms or wouldn’t go down in the cellar, then he would start making fun of him. They might be allies in the sense that they were working for the same goal, but Harry had heard the tone in Malfoy’s voice when he said their strongest defense was weak right now. Harry had to go along to get along, but he didn’t want to be weak.  
  
Instead, he would just keep going.  
  
There was a whirling, rushing noise, and something came down on the table in front of him. “Master Harry’s lunch is  _being_ here,” Ossy said, as though “being” was a verb more like “jousting.”  
  
Harry turned his head, and gaped. There was a whole silver tray, wider than the table, sprawling across it, and on it were plates of chicken falling off the bone, and slices of ham that were pink like roses, and something soft and rich and steaming that Harry thought must be lamb—the Dursleys had had it sometimes—and pieces of beef with delicate black edges, and juices rolling around on the plates that could almost be a meal by themselves. Harry sat up, and Ossy handed him a fork and knife, and Harry started eating.  
  
He didn’t know when he became aware that Malfoy was watching him. He looked up and nodded to him.   
  
Malfoy crossed the green carpet with a delicate, stalking motion, like a jaguar in the jungle. He sat down on the far end of the long couch, which was a pale yellow, and which probably went with the green in some way that Harry was too uncultured to understand. “We need to perform the ceremony as soon as possible,” he said.  
  
Harry nodded and swallowed the chicken in his mouth, nearly burning his tongue, so he could answer. “Yeah, I know. You got those wizards who attacked us out of sight?”  
  
Malfoy’s eyelashes flickered. “There is only one idiot in this room, Potter.”  
  
Harry shrugged. Some of Malfoy’s insults were going to sting him, but that one was too generic to do so. “Good. Then I think I need to write a letter to Gringotts, to get my vaults transferred into yours, and we need to send an owl to Ollivander to arrange a private appointment. It would be too much of a risk if someone saw you going into his shop when you don’t have a kid or anything.”  
  
Malfoy spent a moment doing that staring thing. Harry got on with his meal, because a moment Malfoy was doing that was a moment when he wasn’t insulting Harry or expecting him to respond.  
  
Then Malfoy said, “That’s a good idea. Thank—you.”  
  
Harry grunted. “Can I start rebuilding the wards before the ceremony, or do I need to wait until after it?”  
  
Malfoy took a breath that inflated most of his chest. “After. We’ve never hired ward-crafters from outside the family. All of ours are blood-linked.”  
  
Harry grimaced. “All right. Then we need to do something in the meantime, to give you a temporary measure.” He finished the ham and moved on to the lamb, which was good enough that he had to restrain himself from gobbling. “I’ll owl Hermione. She knows some rituals that we can set up outside the grounds, in a big circle around them.”  
  
Malfoy’s stare seemed as if he’d like to carve bits of bone out of the sides of Harry’s skull. “What makes you assume  _she_ could do anything? That I would permit her to?”  
  
“Because right now you need protection so badly that you can’t choose your allies,” Harry said, and pointed the knife at him. Malfoy’s eyes darkened. Harry remembered that the git didn’t have his wand, and dropped the knife back to rest in his lap. “She can help. I can’t do anything until I get some proper rest and my magic starts flowing again. She’s our best bet.”  
  
Malfoy nodded, head bowed so his hair concealed his eyes. Harry went back to eating. Leaving Malfoy to make his peace with this was something he could do.  
  
*  
  
Draco was breathing in tight, controlled bursts, and he forced down all the many things he wanted to say, scream, shout. Soon enough Potter would be a Malfoy, and then there would be less of this nonsense. It was only temporary, yes. It would work.  
  
But then he would have Potter in a situation that meant  _Draco_ was in control, because he knew more about being a Malfoy, and that would make him Potter’s teacher and mentor.  
  
 _I don’t want to be that. But I’ll take it over being his helpless debtor._


	4. Circle the Wards

“Harry, you know that I’m always ready to help.”  
  
Harry smiled tiredly into the heart of the fire. Hermione’s face hovered there, and even through the green cast that the Floo powder gave to everything, she looked genuinely worried. He yawned before he could reply. “That’s great, Hermione. Thank you. I know how much of an effort it must take you to do something for Malfoy.”  
  
Hermione sighed a little. “I don’t  _like_ it, but in a little while, you’ll share his name for at least five years. If I want to see you, then I probably need to get along with him as much as possible.”  
  
“I think it’ll be longer than five years,” Harry reminded her quietly. “He said we could get—divorced then. I don’t know if you use the term divorce for a demi-marriage.” He hurried on before Hermione could say anything, since he knew she would get distracted by the question and it had only been an idle speculation on his part. “But I would still have his name. I would still be a Malfoy.”  
  
“That’s what’s so bloody depressing,” Hermione muttered, and stared at her hands. “I’m sorry, Harry. We should have spent more time researching that ritual we used to destroy the Dementor ghosts—”  
  
“ _I_ could have spent more time thinking about how I would manage it if the life-force I got from the three of us wasn’t enough,” Harry reminded her. “And questioning it when suddenly I had everything I needed, where before I didn’t. We have to stop talking about that now, or we’ll be sitting here and apologizing to each other for a year.”  
  
Hermione’s lips quivered, and then she nodded. “I’ll look up the rituals that create a charmed circle around the house. It shouldn’t take me more than a few hours to find one, although longer to perform it. And I’ll need your help.” She paused and eyed him. “And in return, I want you to get some  _sleep,_ Harry Potter.”  
  
Harry let a yawn slip through before he could stop it. Someone talking about sleep seemed to do that to him. “I will, I promise,” he muttered. “But there was so much to be done first. Owls to be sent and friends to be talked to and all.”  
  
“But after this?” Hermione demanded.  
  
Harry cast a quick glance sideways. The house-elf, Ossy, had taken Harry up to the bedroom where he was apparently going to sleep and showed him the fireplace and the bowl of Floo powder that he would use to talk to Hermione, but he stood there with his arms folded and stared at Harry the whole time, and it was hardly comfortable. At least Harry thought that Ossy would insist he get some sleep so that he could be fresh for Ossy’s master in the morning.  
  
“Yes, I will,” he said, and turned back to the fireplace. “I do appreciate this, Hermione. If I didn’t say that before.”  
  
“You’ve said it enough,” Hermione said, and smiled at him. “I think I know the first book to look in. If Malfoy wants to look it over, I’ll owl it to him.” She paused one more time. “I’ve already looked up some of the demi-marriage ceremonies, Harry. And I don’t like the sound of them.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I don’t, either, but what choice do I have?”  
  
Hermione’s expression said there were  _lots_ of choices, but she knew better than to argue that side of his principles with him. She continued grimly, though. “The descriptions of the ceremonies said that they’re meant to bind someone to the family. That’s the word they all use,  _bind._ They can’t force you to take on the same beliefs; the books specifically said that your soul and mind aren’t affected, I suppose because they want to do that themselves.”  
  
Harry smiled faintly, both to acknowledge the grimace Hermione was making and urge her along past the moment she was stuck on. “But they affect you physically?”  
  
Hermione nodded so vigorously it looked like her neck hurt. “Yeah. They tie you into the family’s wards. They give you—I don’t know how to describe it, a connection to the house, so that you feel differently when you leave the property.” She hesitated again. “And when it’s an adoption ceremony done later in life, they can affect your looks. The old families were into passing down the stamp of their bloodlines, I think.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He hated the thought of losing the way his hair looked, or the color of his eyes, or even having his eyes fixed. Those were all connections to his parents, and he’d treasured them as a teenager the way he’d treasured his scar when he was a child. The scar, though, was valuable to him before he knew the real story. The way he looked mattered  _because_ he knew the story.  
  
But he’d come this far, and he couldn’t back out now. And he’d already decided that what his parents might potentially have thought about that, and the extinction of the Potter name, didn’t matter.  
  
“Thanks for looking that up, Hermione,” he said, opening his eyes. “But I think I’ll have to live with it.”  
  
Ron would have urged him to reconsider again, but Hermione was wise enough to tell when her doing that would only make Harry unhappy. She held out her hand as if they could touch through the fire, and then pulled it back. “I’ll look for those books,” she whispered. “Good-bye.” The Floo Connection faded.  
  
Harry leaned back for a moment in the chair, and found the room going dark as his head spun and his eyelids drooped. He shook his head and sat upright with an effort, his hands clenched on the ornate, gilded arms of the chair. He needed to get some sleep, and he couldn’t fall asleep here.  
  
“Master Harry will come this way.”  
  
Ossy had already marched over to the bed in the center of the room. It looked like a mermaid’s wet dream, Harry thought, staring at it. It was blue-green, in the sheets and the pillows and the curtains that netted it, and it shifted in the middle in a way that suggested it was made of water, or at least had water in it.  
  
“Master Harry will be sleeping.”  
  
 _Yes, definitely like Trelawney,_ Harry thought, shuddering a little as he lay down in the bed and pulled the covers over his head.  _He speaks as though everyone must do everything he says at once. It’s as bad as prophecy._ He closed his eyes and sighed. At this point, he was tired enough to sleep on the pavement.   
  
Ossy said something else, but sleep came in and drowned Harry, and he discovered that he didn’t have to pay attention to anything besides that.  
  
*  
  
Draco received the thick book from Granger with nothing more than a blink. This was the kind of joke that his life had become, taking help from Mudbloods when he should have been able to rely on his own power and intuition.  
  
But he had read up on the demi-marriage ceremony, and he knew how to change things so that he and Potter were more balanced, less dependent on life-debts, more dependent on Potter being a Malfoy.  
  
Draco leaned back and considered the list in front of him. It was a side-by-side comparison of the adoption ceremony and the usual demi-marriage ceremony, the one that could be performed with a cousin who knew the family and was becoming an heir, part of the direct line, in truth. Draco drummed his fingers on the table and wished there  _was_ a cousin. Then there wouldn’t be the need for this scrabble.  
  
But the idea had come to him as soon as he understood what Potter had cost their family, and he was going to continue with it no matter what. Because no one else would help them, and because Potter had been the reason for this, and because Potter  _should_ pay. Because Draco could guilt him.  
  
 _There should be better reasons than that,_ said the echo of his father that always seemed to hang about the study.  
  
 _But there aren’t,_ Draco answered back, and then stood and shoved away from the desk, striding out of the study in a dazzle of shelves, and along the corridors in a dizzying blue of blue-and-white. This wing was his mother’s favorite, with the softer colors, and he didn’t stop walking until he came to her door. And then he only knocked before he entered out of courtesy, not because he thought his mother would hear him.  
  
She lay quietly in bed, eyes shut and breath heaving her chest. Draco took his seat on the stool next to the bed and stared at her.  
  
She still had comfortable sheets and delicious food and all the help she needed with getting to the loo or eating; Draco had assigned Affy to see to her, and only to be available to him when she was sleeping. But she had lost most of her hearing, and her sight was blurred, and her heart labored now.  
  
Draco clenched his hands on his knees and looked at her slack face, the hanging lips that couldn’t close all the way anymore, the ruffled white hair that tangled around her ears. He thought he could have accepted his mother coming to look like this if he, and she, had had years to grow into it. She would still be someone he loved, someone he had become used to seeing transform.  
  
But not this. Not this sudden blow of fifty years at once.  
  
Draco leaned forwards. He couldn’t crumble, he wouldn’t cry, because then it would become animal howls like the ones he had uttered when he first saw Narcissa. He had only managed to stop that because Ossy had told him all the wards were down, and he had had to think of what he would do for his only remaining family.  
  
 _Not the only one, soon._  
  
Draco straightened and stared at his mother again, reaching out to take one hand that had gone so slender her fingers felt like bones. Narcissa stirred but didn’t wake. Draco nodded, each movement feeling as weighty as a clock’s chime.   
  
Yes. He would do what was necessary. He would do well by his  _family._  
  
And if that included Potter soon, well, Draco could put up with that, and treat him well, too. He would be the one who knew the most, Potter the helpless child in the face of all the accumulated Malfoy knowledge, and Draco could use Potter’s money as he saw fit and wield his strength.   
  
 _Because it’s our strength. What we gave him. He’s only returning it to us, but he stole it in a moment and he’ll return it across years. That’s the way it has to work._  
  
He looked at his mother again, and then sent Affy for the book lying on his desk. For Narcissa, he could do far worse things than touch a book a Mudblood had sent him.  
  
*  
  
“You know it will not be that simple.”  
  
Harry stepped back when he saw the way that Ollivander looked at him. He had come when Harry sent the owl, but he had come in a wheelchair pushed by a young woman who had the same bright yellow eyes and long fingers he did. She handed the wands over and said nothing the whole time, but Harry saw the way she looked at Malfoy, and could guess what she  _would_ have said.  
  
“To match a wand with Malfoy?” Harry inclined his head. “I know. But he has to have one, and we’re going to match him.”  
  
Ollivander either cared more about his business than he was acting like at the moment or had simply wanted Harry to know that he was unhappy with coming up with wands for someone who had once imprisoned him, because he grunted and opened several boxes at once. “Come here, young Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy did it, glaring at Harry the whole time. Harry stepped back with his arms folded and ignored that. Malfoy was in the kind of mood that involved glaring at everybody and everything. When Harry had come into the dining room that morning, the place Ollivander was meeting them, Malfoy had been trying to drill holes in the table with his eyes. And the table had certainly done nothing to him.  
  
Malfoy tried wands of hawthorn, and oak, and holly, and ebony, and maple, and on it went, with nothing matching his hand. Most of them, Ollivander took away at once with a shake and a mutter, and sent his assistant to fetch more from the enormous tumble of slender boxes they had brought with them. She did it each time, and each time, her face deepened and her lips parted a little more.  
  
 _She’s hoping he won’t find anything that suits him,_ Harry thought, and shook his head. Before that happened, he would take Malfoy to the shop under a glamour, and they would try it there. He didn’t want the burden of the whole defense of Malfoy Manor to fall on his shoulders, because, among other things, he knew that he would never be good enough at it.  
  
Malfoy threw down the last wand and turned away from Ollivander with a hiss. Ollivander leaned back and looked his assistant in the eye. Her fingers tightened on the back of the wheelchair, and she said something that snapped and popped like ice.  
  
“No, we have to,” Ollivander said. “I told you, Maria. Professionalism in all things is the first virtue.”  
  
Maria did some more glaring, and then finally seemed to realize that she couldn’t convince her grandfather—or was he her great-uncle? Harry thought—to give this up. She grunted and stalked off towards the door of the dining room. They had put a few boxes down there, but they were bigger than typical wand boxes, so Harry hadn’t thought much about them.  
  
Now he saw Ossy hovering next to them, and raised his eyebrows. Ossy and Maria had a silent staring contest that Harry had to bite his lip to keep from grinning over, and then Maria sniffed and turned around with the box safely cradled in her hands. It was made of cherry, Harry thought, or some other rich, deep red wood, and she put it down as gently in Ollivander’s lap as though it were crystal.  
  
 _Or as if it would explode._ Once he made the comparison, Harry couldn’t restrain a flinch when Ollivander snapped open the clasps on the lid.  
  
But inside lay what looked like an ordinary wand, if more like a tree branch than some of those Harry had seen. Ollivander touched it gently, fanning out his fingers as if he assumed that it would snap at anyone but its matched master.  
  
“We can but try,” he said, perhaps to Maria, perhaps to Malfoy, and then held it out to him.   
  
Malfoy picked it up. The wand flared with a white light, and then died down again. Malfoy blinked, regarded it from the side with an expression that reminded Harry of the one he had worn when Harry actually won their Quidditch games, and whispered, “ _Lumos._ ”  
  
Harry flung a hand over his eyes as the light stabbed into them. Malfoy quickly calmed it down, but when Harry could see again, he was holding the wand in both hands as if it was a club, looking at it with eyes that had more than a little dazzle in them.  
  
 _He’s glad to be able to do magic again,_ Harry thought, and then shifted his shoulders in irritation with himself. Well, of  _course_ Malfoy was. Wouldn’t Harry be, if he had been in a situation where the ability was taken away, however temporarily?   
  
“That is the one,” Ollivander said, his head bobbing. From the sharpness in his eyes, however, Harry knew better than to think that was an attack of senility or something similar. “Birch, with basilisk heartstring as the core. One of the rarest wands I ever crafted, and the only wizard it chose had it a week before he died.”  
  
“Because of the wand?” Malfoy’s voice held no emotion, but Harry knew from the way he touched the wand to his lips that he had no thought of giving it up.  
  
Ollivander shook his head. “He was in a duel, and the wand killed his opponent. But he was so shocked and so magically exhausted that he had a heart attack, and his family was superstitious. They sent that wand back to me.” He unfolded one arm to point straight at Malfoy with a crooked hand. “Don’t waste it. Don’t make it so that it  _needs_ to come back to me.”  
  
Malfoy nodded. His eyes were wide. Harry imagined him making plans, basing it on the first response of the wand to his first spell. Perhaps he would have to spend less time picking up magic again than he had assumed was the case.  
  
He saw Harry looking and snapped his head sharply to the side, a sneer working its way across his lips. Harry was the one who stepped forwards to pay Ollivander, which made sense, because it was his money anyway.  
  
He was watching Malfoy walk from the room when he felt a cool hand on his wrist. He blinked and glanced down at Ollivander, who met his eyes and said forthrightly, “Do you think that you will make peace with him?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t know what that means. I think of us as allies,” he added temperately, because if Ollivander was about to ask Harry to get back at Malfoy for his imprisonment, Harry wanted him to know he couldn’t do anything.  
  
“Watch him,” Ollivander whispered. “Someone with a wand that has a core of basilisk heartstring might do  _anything_.” He began to cough, and Maria came up and pressed something thin and pink into his hands. Ollivander swallowed it dry.  
  
“Well,” Harry said, and smiled a little, waiting for the moment when Ollivander glanced up at him. “I  _did_ kill a basilisk when I was twelve.”  
  
Ollivander smiled, and Maria reached out and briefly squeezed Harry’s hand. He couldn’t tell if it was a sympathy clasp or a good luck clasp, since she had reasons to dislike Malfoy that had nothing to do with him, and they were gone before he could ask. Harry walked thoughtfully upstairs to find Malfoy.  
  
He didn’t find him. The door that Malfoy had told him led to Narcissa’s private room was shut, and there was the sound of steady chanting from behind it. Harry hesitated, and then went to firecall Ron and Hermione. Both of them had a better idea than he did of what Healers from St. Mungo’s might be trusted, or how to find private ones if they didn’t think it was a good idea to contact Healers there. Harry had spent too much time in the last few years with his head up the Ministry’s arse.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned towards his mother and swished the wand. He had to concentrate, and he had to whisper the spell aloud, which was ridiculous, when he had been able to do it nonverbally for years.  
  
But there was something new here. Not the steady, confident feeling he had had when using his other wand. Only a weak pulse of something fluttery up his hand, down his arm, and down to the wand.  
  
“ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ,” he whispered.  
  
One of Narcissa’s pillows floated into the air, and rearranged itself behind her head. Narcissa opened her eyes with a faint moan, but closed them again when Draco whispered reassuring words and clutched her hand.  
  
Draco leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and his chest going so fast that it hurt to breathe.  
  
Two spells. He could do two spells.  
  
Pathetic. Not the kind of thing he would have to have to fend off their enemies, as soon as they moved again.   
  
But better than it had been two days ago. Which meant that his plan to go after Potter had worked after all. Because now he was in a stronger position, in relation to both Potter and everything else.   
  
They were going to live.  
  
The thought seemed to have tossed him down from some great height, and he sat there with his mother’s hand in his until Potter called out to him that Granger had arrived, and they had to go out and establish the wards. Draco stood up, smoothed his shirt down, and stroked the end of his wand across his face to remove the tears that might have collected in the corners of his eyes.  
  
Potter had given him back a little of his strength. Draco owed it to both of them to appear calm and composed, both so that Potter wouldn’t think a little gift like this could undo him and to hold off thoughts of attacking him, should Potter have any.  
  
 _I am starting to doubt that he will._  
  
Draco shrugged as he shut and locked the door behind him. That wasn’t the point. He could trust in his magic, and he might be able to trust in Potter after they got the wards lifted and Potter secured into the family. Assuming they finished lifting the wards with the ritual Granger had found by the end of today, Draco would like to have the demi-wedding tomorrow.  
  
He had no idea whether that would be possible. But the wand in his hand shouldn’t have been possible, either. Keep his eyes fixed on the future, he thought as he walked around the corner and down the stairs, and more things than he hoped right now might indeed be possible.  
  
*  
  
Hermione frowned at Harry and shook her head. “The Ministry says the same thing they always say, Harry. That they can hold them, but they don’t know their names or who they were working for. These mercenaries have those spells that remove every trace of their magical signatures, you know that.” Her lips clamped shut on a snarl of disapproval. “And wizards can’t take fingerprints.”  
  
“Damn it,” Harry sighed, turning away to watch Malfoy come out the front door of the Manor. He knew that the Ministry didn’t usually have much luck in tracking down the origins of the mercenaries, who did disguise themselves under multiple layers of glamours and Memory Charms and lies when they went rogue, and it probably had nothing to do with what Malfoy had said about the Ministry hating his family. But he would have been happier with concrete answers about why they had attacked the Manor just then, and who else knew about the wards being down.  
  
And why they hadn’t come back in the two days since then.  
  
 _Well, in a few minutes it won’t matter,_ Harry thought, and nodded to Malfoy. “Hermione found a ritual that she can cast from the outside. You and I need to walk in a circle and hold hands. Imagine the new wards as hard as you can. Tell us what you want them to look like first,” he added, when Malfoy widened his eyes and stared hard at both Harry and Hermione. “I’ll be the one who casts.”  
  
“What will Granger be doing?” Malfoy’s voice was a little hoarse. Harry deliberately didn’t look for tear tracks in the corners of his eyes.  
  
“Making the actual ritual preparations that will create the huge circle around the house in the first place,” Harry said, holding out his hand. “That will expand the wards I create to the circle. Ready?”  
  
Malfoy hesitated, but let Harry take his hand. It was sweaty and damp. Harry turned his head to watch Hermione, waiting for her signal to begin. “Tell me what you want the wards to look like,” he whispered.  
  
Silence, to the point that Harry had to wonder if Malfoy would rather die after all, now that he had a new wand, rather than cooperate with Harry and his friends. Then he said in a dry voice, “I want blue shields. Transparent, but strong.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. “All right. I’ll start raising them, and you tell me if they’re right when you see them.”   
  
He began to cast when Hermione called his name, taking the usual ward spells that Aurors would use to shield a temporary headquarters or other post where they were planning a raid, and then changing them in his mind so that they would fit Malfoy’s specifications. Blue, transparent, and shield-like wasn’t that huge a jump from red, thick, and opaque, as long as he kept the classifications in mind. Easier to change something into its opposite than to build something entirely new, really.  
  
When he opened his eyes, the blue wards were shifting past him, piling up like translucent mountains, while Hermione’s magic tugged at them. Harry nodded, and turned to face the south quadrant, lifting his wand again.  
  
Malfoy hissed, and almost broke away from him. Harry whirled to face him, ready to snap. Did Malfoy understand how  _delicate_ this ritual was, and the risk that Hermione was taking, to raise them from the outside this way?  
  
Then he saw the dragon stooping down towards them, and decided that Malfoy might have a point. Grimly, he threw Malfoy behind him and raised his wand in preparation for the battle.


	5. The Demi-Demi-Marriage

Harry’s first thought was that he didn’t know any spells that could stop a dragon, his second that the new wards shifting about them, not yet anchored in place, certainly wouldn’t, and his third that they were all going to  _die_.  
  
Then he told himself not to be an idiot. His mind flashed back to the Triwizard Tournament, and he jerked his arm up, down, sideways, and barked out a Transfiguration incantation before he could convince himself that it wouldn’t work, which was half the problem with his combat spells.  
  
One of the peacocks stalking Hermione beyond the ward circle shrieked and cooed as its wings grew longer and scales streamed over its body. Harry swallowed and faced the winged serpent that now dawdled there, somewhere between ground and sky, its body brilliant green with golden lightning bolts stabbing down the sides. It had feathered wings in the same colors, but its head was still pale white.  
  
“ _Defend us,_ ” Harry demanded in Parseltongue. “ _I know that this is your home, and you don’t want to see it burned down._ ”  
  
Not all the words came out the way they would if he was speaking in English, undoubtedly, but he said enough—or something—for the winged serpent to take notice. It faced the dragon diving down from the clouds, and its tongue flicked out before it snapped its body straight and took off. The wings stroked steadily, and it coiled its tail around itself as though it wanted to strangle the dragon.  
  
As Harry had intended, the dragon took notice of the winged serpent and swerved towards it, the way that Cedric’s dragon in the Tournament had been distracted by the dog he conjured. Harry had read once that a lot of dragons paid attention to the closest prey, unless one of its opponents was obviously more dangerous than the others.  
  
The serpent probably looked dangerous to the dragon because it was in the sky, just like the dragon was. Harry cast furiously, adding bright sparkles of light to the serpent’s wings and tail to attract the dragon further, and then spun around and looked for Hermione. She stood beyond the circle, the book forgotten in her hands, staring up at the contest in the sky.  
  
“Hermione!” Harry shouted, using the voice he had when Ron had nearly gone over a cliff during one of their wilder chases as Aurors.  
  
Hermione started and faced them again, and caught sight of Harry’s plan in his eyes or face or just because of that general telepathy that had sometimes done well by them when they were in danger on the Horcrux hunt. She nodded and immediately started chanting again. The blue wards that had drifted untethered in the air floated back towards her, compelled by the runes her wand drew towards the earth.  
  
Harry turned to Malfoy. He hadn’t stopped gaping up at the battle in the air. His grip on his wand was so tight that Harry started to fear they would have to send it back to Ollivander after all, just in two pieces.  
  
“Focus, Malfoy!” Harry snapped, his hands clenching on Malfoy’s. “We need to keep imagining the wards! Concentrate as hard as you can!”  
  
Malfoy turned back to him, his head shaking and his hands spread as though he was going to seize Harry and dash him to the ground. “It isn’t going to  _work_ ,” he hissed. “There’s no wards that can keep out dragonfire, except the old ones that you destroyed, and it’ll come too close for us to—”  
  
“We still stand more of a chance with some wards than we do now,” Harry said, and raised his wand. “ _Concentrate._ ”  
  
Malfoy looked at him some more, but either Harry’s last word had actually hit him or he had decided that he might as well cooperate, because he closed his eyes. Harry reached out and began to weave the wards, letting the images from Malfoy’s mind flow along his hand and down his wand; Hermione hadn’t explained that part well, only that, when she began to put the circle and the runes into place around the Manor, they would take Malfoy’s imagination and make something solid out of it.  
  
And what other choice did they have at the moment?  
  
*  
  
With his eyes closed, Draco was alone in the darkness with his racing thoughts.  
  
Which could have been summarized as: A dragon. His enemies had the money and the resources to bring in a dragon, and that meant this was the end of everything. Why keep fighting? He could let the wards, that is, the pathetic attempts at wards that Potter and the Mudblood were trying to help him with, fall now and walk out with open arms to welcome the fire diving at him. It would be a quicker end.  
  
 _Malfoys are not meant for quick ends._  
  
His father’s voice seared across an image of his mother in bed, and his mouth tightened. No, his father was right. No way that he could let his mother die in the flames, not if there was a chance. And he had reached out to Potter and done horrible things for his family just in the past few days. He could do something as easy as this.  
  
He concentrated, and felt no devouring flame, no touch of furious pain in the moments before it took him. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and turned his head.  
  
Granger was practically dancing with her wand, on the north side of the Manor now, working a rune-circle that made Draco’s lip curl. If she had had the power and the blood, he would have made  _her_ part of the family. She certainly had more magical knowledge than Potter did, and far more theory.  
  
Then he turned back, and saw what Potter was doing.  
  
If Granger danced with her wand, he partnered with it, demanded it work with him, and then flung forth the magic that came into it in noisy splashes of blue. The shields coalesced into sparkling wards, and flew to Granger, who fastened them into place. But she couldn’t have done that as fast as she did without Potter’s pace, which Draco thought looked as if it was enough to rip his wand apart.  
  
It wasn’t. It didn’t.  
  
And Potter and Granger had almost completed the circle, and the dragon hadn’t killed them yet.  
  
Draco looked up to see what was happening.  
  
The winged serpent that Potter had Transfigured out of  _Draco’s_ peacock still circled, beating its wings and darting around the dragon—a Common Welsh Green, Draco could see, now that he didn’t fear burning to death in the next second—and nipping its tail. The dragon kept turning to chase it, but its movements were hastier now, its chest inflating.  
  
Draco swallowed. So the dragon would breathe out soon and incinerate the serpent, and  _then_ they could go back to worrying about burning to death.  
  
Potter cursed. Draco spun back, a defense as to why he had stopped concentrating on the tip of his tongue.  
  
But Potter was crouching over the ground, studying what appeared to be nothing more than grass and soil, but which Draco assumed connected to their defenses in some way. He shook his head and yelled words to Granger that Draco didn’t bother keeping track of. What mattered was that the blue wards had stopped moving towards the circle Granger had sketched.  
  
Draco came up behind Potter and leaned a knee into the middle of his back to let him know he was there. “What is it?” he demanded, as low-voiced as possible. Talk loudly, and Potter would hear the nervous snap from Draco’s fear of the dragon. “What is it?”  
  
Potter spun around and glared at him. “Your fucking  _grounds_ ,” he said. “Hermione has to get the circle down deeper to anchor it, and the runes are meeting resistance. She says that she recognizes it. Some bloody  _ancestor_ of yours made the soil so thick and unresponsive that we can’t get the circle into it.”  
  
Draco blinked, and then sneered at him. “If you’d told me that your plan involved disturbing the soil, I could have told you that,” he snapped. “Yes, of course we don’t want people able to affect our grounds when they’re not Malfoys. What would be the sense in—”  
  
Potter pulled away from him and stomped towards Granger, yelling something at her. Draco reached out and snagged a handful of his hair, pulling him back.  
  
Potter yanked and spun and crouched, and spit at Draco from a safe distance away, or what he seemed to think was a safe distance. Draco still had soft black strands of hair twined around his fingers. “What are you  _doing_?”  
  
“I have a solution,” Draco said. He hadn’t known he would speak until he did, but now his voice and heart both hammered along in him, and he was confident that he could do what he must. “The solution we were going to do anyway. If you become a Malfoy, then the soil  _has_ to respond to you.”  
  
Potter stared at him. A curl of hair fell over his eyes. Then he said, “You told me the demi-marriage would be a full ceremony.”  
  
“The essentials are the important thing,” Draco said. “I want the ceremony because that way there can be no doubt that you belong to me.”  
  
Potter showed his teeth.  
  
“But the essentials are what bind you to the soil,” Draco finished hastily. “The same thing that would make it possible for us to affect it. We can’t raise the family-based wards yet, we’ll need the full ceremony for that, but we can do this.”  
  
Potter whipped his wand around in a motion that made it seem as if he was cutting his throat, and then reached up and clasped Draco’s wrists, drawing him down to crouch at his eye level. Draco gasped and bucked, but Potter hadn’t harmed him. He was just staring at him from a few centimeters away, intense as a forest fire.  
  
“Get on with it,” Potter said.   
  
Draco licked his lips, and began the chant.  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t understand half the words that Malfoy was using, but he knew they were Latin, which meant that he could ask Malfoy to repeat them later and Hermione to translate them.  
  
 _Why are you worrying about the translation when you know what they’re going to do to you?_  
  
Harry shivered uncontrollably, and then clenched his teeth shut in irritation. He had already agreed to do this, and right now, this ceremony, or bare outline of a ceremony, or whatever it was, could be all that stood between them and fiery death. Why was he objecting  _now_ , of all times?  
  
Malfoy’s hands on his shoulders had begun to feel like granite claws. Harry opened his eyes and didn’t shift his weight, because it wouldn’t help, but he did look at Malfoy’s face.  
  
It was desperate, set, pale. Harry took a deep breath and reminded himself that, just because Malfoy was willing to do this and had come up with the idea, it didn’t mean that he actually  _liked_ the way things had turned out any more than Harry had. He reached up and laid his hands along Malfoy’s.  
  
Malfoy’s jaw popped down, and he looked for a second as though he was going to ask why Harry had done that, but he snatched up the chant and continued with it a few seconds later. Harry shuddered as he felt the earth beneath his knees seem to become softer, more yielding, and the way that his hair hung around his neck changed, too. His hair was bristling, and twisting, and moving, but it was changing.  
  
And he could feel the magic flowing into his bones, filling them.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He knew that he had agreed to the changes, but he still didn’t want to look at Malfoy while they were happening, see them reflected in the way that Malfoy’s expression would probably change to a smug one. At the moment, it was enough to feel the power surging through him and know that he could use it when he needed to.  
  
*  
  
Draco had been worried that he wouldn’t remember the chant, but this was the simplest part of the ceremonies, if the one that took the longest. He might not be able to remember what liquid to bathe Potter with first, or exactly how to mark his face, but he knew what to say. The words curved back to the beginning and repeated each time.  
  
And with each repetition, Potter changed a little more.  
  
His black hair was becoming softer, more tamed, and the way it curled around his ears was different. Draco couldn’t say how, because it wasn’t like he had ever spent much time staring at that part of Potter and doing anything but daydreaming about hitting him in the neck with a hex. But he knew it was. The magic told him so, washing through his fingers, reaching out and embracing Potter.  
  
The angles of his face were changing, too, not enough that someone who walked past him on the street wouldn’t have recognized him, but enough that they might have stared before they did. Draco smirked even as he chanted, wondering how Potter would react when he found out that he was now “pointy” in the way that he had always derided Draco for being.  
  
For a moment, a gleam of gold touched the strands of his hair, and Draco raised his voice, wondering if it could conquer the darkness and make a blond Malfoy out of Potter after all. There were references to brown-haired heirs in the literature on demi-marriages, and all of them had taken on the paler color that marked the Malfoys.  
  
But perhaps Potter’s hair was too dark. After a few more seconds, the gold vanished, and instead the magic turned its attention to softening Potter’s hair still further, and lengthening it until it brushed his shoulders.  
  
Potter hissed. Draco looked down and saw the golden tendrils working their way through Potter’s fingers, over his wand.  
  
Granger screamed.  
  
Potter’s muscles bunched in a way that Draco  _knew,_ that meant Potter was going to try to rise to his feet and rescue her, but Draco’s hands latched even further, and he raised his voice again, the only way he knew of telling Potter that he  _must_ stay still without breaking the chant.  
  
Potter’s muscles trembled, and then he bowed his head and seemed to force himself to give in. His breath was still rattling and rustling around like dragged chains, but he didn’t even turn his head; he went on staring fiercely at Draco.  
  
Draco leaned forwards as the last round of the chant neared. He had committed Potter to the Malfoys, to the land, to the rain and the sun and the wind, the representatives of the elements. Now he needed to commit Potter to the marriage—the last measure needed to bind him as part of the family.   
  
It would be only a temporary measure, of course, until they could actually perform the demi-marriage and attach him permanently to the name. But just because of that, they had to make it count all the more.  
  
Draco breathed into Potter’s face. Potter snapped his head backwards, staring at him as if he didn’t know what Draco was about.  
  
Draco didn’t dare break the chant, but the breath had to be done, and he glared until Potter seemed to realize that. He breathed back, and Draco opened his lips and caught it.  
  
That raised the magic around them, to the point that Draco could feel it crawling around them like stone walls and turning his blood to some leaping fountain. He shuddered, dizzy with power. He hoped that he would be the one who could hold on until the end of the chant, now, and not release Potter’s hands because of the way his shook.  
  
One last chant.  
  
He finished it with a long hiss on the last “ _familia_ ,” and then leaned forwards and slapped his lips over Potter’s.  
  
Potter’s muscles tensed again, a muffled jerk of surprise. He didn’t pull away and yell at Draco, but it seemed likely that he was considering it. Certainly his lips were a good deal stiffer beneath Draco’s than in any kiss Draco had ever had before, and his hands wrung as though he thought breaking Draco’s wrists was a good idea.  
  
But then he kissed back.  
  
No tongue, but a decent movement of lips, Draco thought, his brain suspended for a single dazzling instant in the middle of all that magic, able to think about something as ordinary as this.  
  
And then the nothingness exploded around him, and flung him high into the air. He was gasping from the force of it; he was bent double, and his hands were around Potter’s, and Potter was sitting there, waiting for the moment it was right to break away.  
  
Draco sucked in a breath and looked up at him.  
  
He hadn’t changed in his eye color, and the gold had made no inroads in the black of his hair, either. But his scar was gone, and his forehead was marked instead with a small, coiling dragon. Draco felt his lips move. Given his first name and the way that they were fighting a dragon during the first part of their wedding, he found that appropriate.  
  
“Done,” he whispered.  
  
Potter bolted to his feet—Draco wondered if it was his imagination, or if Potter really did move more gracefully than he had a short while ago—and whipped around with his wand aimed high. Granger had been beyond the circle, Draco remembered, and leaned around Potter, no, he would have to call him something else now, to see if she was all right.  
  
She was backed up towards the circle, with the dragon hanging above her. It had not attacked yet; its tongue was flicking out instead, and it clawed at its muzzle with one talon as though someone had stuffed pepper up its nostrils.  
  
Draco blinked, and then realized what had happened. His laughter rang out in spite of himself. The blast of magic he and Potter had unleashed had dazzled the thing much the way it had them, but instead of giving it strength, it had clouded the dragon’s senses. Draco remembered reading a book saying that a dragon’s perceptions were keener when it hunted. Its eyes would be wide open, its ears tracking all sorts of sounds it never noticed most of the time. This was the equivalent of blinding and deafening it.  
  
Granger turned towards them when she heard Draco laugh, and then ran desperately for the rune circle.  
  
The dragon’s head snapped towards her. It might be paralyzed by some of the blasts of light and power they’d come up with, but its fundamental instinct was still to track prey, to pay attention to running things. It dived with its talons aimed straight at her.  
  
Potter spoke, with compelling power behind every word, a curse Draco had never heard, and the earth and sky split apart.  
  
*  
  
Harry threw the spell before he could think if it was a good idea, while he was still brooding and deciding and hesitating, and then remembered how Hermione and Malfoy would probably react to it.  
  
But if it saved Hermione’s life, he thought, as he rode the earthquake down to a kneeling position and bowed his head against the thunder, he would live with whatever disdain and incomprehension came his way.  
  
The shaking settled. Harry rose carefully to his feet, because sometimes when he had done this curse—always in battle alone, always against opponents that he knew were going to kill him and so get away with torture and murder—a second tremor had happened.   
  
When he looked up and around, though, it had worked. The sky was slowly stitching itself back together form the gaping wound his curse would have caused, opening a deep tunnel to another place. The sight of the hole made Harry’s eyes water, but he could turn his head to the side and look at it indirectly.   
  
Yes. The last stitches sealed, and the hole was gone.  
  
And the dragon with it.  
  
Harry swallowed and turned back to face the rune circle. Somewhere in that disaster, perhaps because Malfoy had bound him to the land and Hermione’s spell had picked up on it or perhaps because of the magic he and Malfoy had generated, the wards had snapped into place. Now shimmering blue walls, like quiet fountains, surrounded the Malfoy property. Harry sat down before he thought about it, and then winced a little as Hermione descended on him.  
  
“You can’t just—” Hermione said, staring at him, and then shook her head. “You can’t  _Vanish_ a dragon like that!”  
  
“He didn’t Vanish it,” Malfoy said, in a tone Harry had never heard from him before. Maybe that was the way he talked when he disapproved of his cousin-husband, Harry thought tiredly. He turned his head, feeling the bones almost grinding together in the back of his neck from weariness, and found Malfoy staring at him. His face didn’t have an expression that Harry recognized, either. “He created a hole that took it—elsewhere.” He shook his head and glanced away. “If you could do that, Potter, why not do it from the beginning of the fight?”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “It’s a Dark spell. And it takes more energy than I thought I could spare. At that point, I still hoped that we could raise the wards without stopping to deal with the dragon.” He sighed and wiped his brow, where the sweat was thick enough to feel like dust. “I was wrong.”  
  
“It’s a Dark spell,” Hermione agreed, almost pleasantly, but Harry heard the charge in the back of her voice and winced. Striking lightning couldn’t compare to this. “And you’re going to tell me where you learned it.”  
  
Harry faced her unflinching. “You know where I did. Auror training, just like all the rest of them I’ve shown you.”  
  
“I don’t believe they teach Dark spells in Auror training,” Hermione said. “Ron would have told me. He tells me everything.”  
  
Harry shrugged. If she didn’t want to believe him, that was her look-out.  
  
“Listen,” Malfoy said, and stepped forwards. “We have to complete the demi-marriage. What we did was only the most basic set of spells to make sure that you could bind the wards to the soil. It’s going to take more than that to make you become a true Malfoy.”  
  
“You already look different,” Hermione told Harry in an undertone. The anger was still there in the back of her mind, Harry knew, but she stepped forwards and gave him a long, slow look that said she wasn’t going to let that stop her concern for him. “Your scar’s—gone. Some kind of dragon in its place. And your hair and your face look different.”  
  
Harry raised his hand to touch his scar, and then brought it back down. “Good,” he said. “I’ve wished for years that my scar looked different, to get rid of that stupid connection to Voldemort and the names the papers were always coming up with. Lucky Lightning, the  _Prophet_ called me for a while, can you believe it.”  
  
Hermione just shut her eyes.  
  
“I made this decision,” Harry said, and stood up, and turned to Malfoy. “Yes, we need to have the wedding as soon as possible, you’re right, especially because the idiots with the dragon might attack again, and the Ministry hasn’t made any progress on learning the identities of the first lot who came after you. You’re ready?”  
  
“There are ceremonies to be gone through,” Malfoy said, still staring at him. “But I believe that I can be ready by tomorrow.”  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
*  
  
Draco tried not to curl his fingers around his new wand, tried not to flinch as he looked at Potter. One of the power differentials between them that he had counted on tipping in his favor was that Potter knew no Dark magic.  
  
It seemed that was no longer true.  
  
And a second thought, a much more dangerous one, whispered on the heels of that first one.  _Should I be trying to conquer him then, if he is so strong? Alliance might work better._


	6. The Bathing

Harry raised his head slowly from his pillow, blinking, then grunted as he remembered. Malfoy had told him to sleep late this morning, because apparently the demi-marriage was best performed in the afternoon. Something about the slant of the light being correct then.  
  
 _I should have paid more attention._  
  
But on the list of things from the demi-marriage that Harry thought likely to affect him, the slant of the light was pretty low. And he had chosen this, as he told Hermione, wound himself in chains of obligation and threat and decision. Learning disturbing things about the demi-marriage or the ceremonies that surrounded it wouldn’t actually change what he had to do.  
  
He rose to his feet and crossed the bedroom to look out the window. Always assuming that the view of the grounds it gave could be trusted, instead of it being an enchanted window that always showed a perfect day, it was about mid-morning. There were a few peacocks stalking under his window, graceful and slow until something startled them and made them bound. The lawn was smooth enough to look like a billiard table; Harry was sure the house-elves kept it that way. Here and there were equally perfect spots of red and blue and yellow, the flowers the house-elves also tended.  
  
And around the edge of the property shone the blue flames of the wards.  
  
Harry nodded at them. Demi-marriage or not, only at the beginning of paying his debt or not, he had done his part and more in that particular payment, and he thought he could be proud of himself.  
  
He turned towards the bathroom, wondering if he should call Ossy. He wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t know if he was supposed to eat anything this morning anyway, but he might also lack towels and soap for the bathroom—  
  
Someone knocked on the door. Harry turned, blinking. It seemed strange Malfoy would have come to see him, but even stranger that Narcissa or one of the house-elves would have knocked. “Come in,” he called.  
  
The door swung open, and Malfoy entered, with two floating green things draped over his arm. Harry blinked at them. They looked like sheer silk robes, and he swallowed, an uncomfortable feeling in his throat that he knew what they would be wearing for the marriage ceremony itself.  
  
Malfoy laid the robes on the bed and clasped his hands behind his back, which made his arms curve like a bird’s wings. Then he bowed to Harry, for all the world like a bird pecking for seed. Harry opened his mouth to laugh, and then Malfoy did something that topped it all, ridiculous gestures notwithstanding.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Harry jerked a little, the way he had yesterday when Malfoy was doing the chant and he’d heard Hermione scream, but he managed to nod cautiously back. If this was playacting, Malfoy had doubtless done it in the service of the marriage ceremony. He took  _that_ dead seriously.  
  
Malfoy straightened up and came a step forwards, reaching out to put his hands on Harry’s shoulders the way he had during the chant yesterday. Harry stood still and suffered it, because the grip didn’t get as heavy. Malfoy studied him from that point-blank range, and then smiled, a soft smile that had nothing to do with emotion. “I can’t call you Potter now, when your name has technically already changed,” he explained.  
  
“I thought you said that my name wouldn’t change officially until the demi-wedding,” Harry said, shaking his head. There were strange things happening to him, tied to the tone of voice in which Malfoy spoke and the expression on his face.  _He doesn’t want this to happen any more than I do, even though he’s the one who proposed it. But he’s capable of pretending, and he practically worships the pretense. It’s like the way I was willing to go ahead and do those interviews with Skeeter to get the truth out in fifth year._  
  
This was something Malfoy took so seriously that he made it seem high and dazzling to Harry, too.  
  
“To me, it has changed,” Malfoy said. “Because you intend to keep your commitment. I see that now, after the way you stood up to the dragon.”  
  
Not quite the truth there, either, Harry thought, from the way that Malfoy clamped his lips together. But Harry just nodded and said, “What’s the first thing I have to do?”  
  
“Relax.”  
  
Harry stared at Malfoy, starting to open his mouth. He couldn’t believe that Malfoy would have chosen a ceremony that required him to do service for Harry.   
  
But Malfoy stepped up to him and made a little spinning gesture with one finger. More because he was caught in that sense of strangeness than because he wanted to, Harry turned his back, and Malfoy reached over and slipped off the shirt that Harry had worn to bed.  
  
Harry tensed. The strangeness was there, too, not sexual, just solemn and pale. And Malfoy wouldn’t want to touch him, anyway. This wasn’t a marriage that they had to consummate. Hermione had assured him of that. This was—well, this was just part of the ceremony. If nothing else, Harry would have to take off his clothes to wear that sheer green robe that Malfoy had brought him.  
  
“Relax,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “You need to show that you have trust in me, to take care of you and absorb you into the family as a Malfoy spouse. The Malfoys are the ones who take care of their cousins and their new heirs, not the other way around. The parents or the richer family is the one who has the ability to do that.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. He hated sacrificing what his life could have been this way.  
  
But he would hate it even more if his sacrifice turned out to be for nothing, and so he made his muscles fall down into lax ripples the way he had sometimes done when he was making a speech for the Ministry and wanted it to actually succeed. His head lolled back as Malfoy took off his trousers, and he forbade himself to bolt the way he wanted to. Luckily for his sanity, Malfoy left his pants alone.  
  
Malfoy stood there behind him, silent. Harry didn’t know what happened next, but he also forbade himself to turn around and ask. That was just what they had to do. He breathed lightly and waited for Malfoy to perform whatever step in the ceremony was brewing in his pointy little head.  
  
*  
  
Draco honestly wasn’t sure whether Harry’s body had changed from the ceremony they’d performed yesterday or whether Harry had always looked differently than he thought, under those Auror robes and official robes and school robes that were all Draco ever saw him in.  
  
But the body in front of him was all muscle, all over. Scars here and there, of course, but they were mostly the scars of burns and blasts from hexes that most Aurors would carry. Paler than expected, too, which meant Harry must not spend much time out in the sun. Draco half-smiled. Well, he would have plenty of time for that now, even with all the studying he had to do. He might as well sit in the sun in the gardens and do that as anywhere else.  
  
Not very broad shoulders, a tapered waist. Harry would never be as impressive and bulky as someone like Gregory or Vincent had been. But Draco still wanted to trace the edges of those muscles with his fingers, and see Harry twitch.  
  
As it happened, though, there was actually a reason that he had almost stripped Harry, and it wasn’t to stare for his own pleasure. “Come,” he whispered, and guided Harry with a hand on his shoulder and one on his hip into the bathroom.  
  
The tub was large, and slightly curved on the bottom only, so that it was possible to balance upright. Harry was flinching by the time that Draco indicated he should raise his leg and step into it, but that was probably only from cold or the fact that Draco was dressed while he was almost naked. Draco herded him into the middle of the tub and then clapped his hands, glad that most of the magic in the house’s bathrooms was made to respond to members of the family rather than cast spells.  
  
Harry yelped when the stream came down, but then stopped, probably because he realized that it was a fine and warm spray, not the freezing cold he must have anticipated. He did try to turn around and look at Draco, though. “You’re dressed,” he muttered. “Aren’t you going to get wet?”  
  
Draco smiled tightly. He appreciated and resented at the same time that Harry had remembered he wouldn’t be able to cast a Drying Charm.  
  
“This is traditional,” he explained, reaching into a pocket and drawing out the bar of mingled soap and shampoo that the ceremony called for. “The Malfoy heir entering the demi-marriage shows that he can soak his clothes and not care, because he always has more.”  
  
“Then why not give me some I can soak?” Harry muttered, but he closed his eyes obediently as Draco rubbed the soap in his hands, creating a thick, spicy-smelling lather, and began to scrub him. Another of those minute flinches, nothing large, and then Harry bowed his head and went back to the controlled breathing that Draco had heard him using a few minutes ago, when Draco first stripped him.   
  
“Because the new heir takes off all his old clothes, sheds his old coverings as he sheds his old name,” Draco murmured back, drawing his fingers up and over Harry’s shoulders, scrubbing. Harry stood there and let him do it, but it was relaxed in the same way that a unicorn waiting for hunters was. “And then he dresses himself anew, so that he can be entirely clad in his new family’s colors.”  
  
“Oh.” More tensing. Draco worked the soap in, and wondered. Harry was rich enough on his own to afford servants if he wanted them. Draco fully understood why someone wouldn’t want to be scrubbed by a house-elf, but had Harry  _really_ never had the experience of someone else washing him? It was a luxury Draco couldn’t imagine giving up.  
  
 _You will have to, for the duration of the demi-marriage, unless you take lovers who can do no harm to your discretion or your reputation._  
  
Draco shrugged at himself and then squeezed the soap, working the lather between his palms so that it became smoother and thinner and changed its scent. He pushed his soaking, silky fingers up along Harry’s neck and worked them so deep into the new, longer, softer hair that Harry tensed again.  
  
“You haven’t looked in a mirror since I changed you yesterday, have you?” Draco asked, because Harry acted as though the weight and length of his own hair surprised him now.  
  
“Since  _we_ changed me,” Harry said. Draco blinked at the nape of his neck again. “No. Hermione told me about the scar. That’s the only change I really know about.”  
  
“Your face looks a little different,” Draco said, and worked his fingers in again. There were strands of Harry’s hair that he was sure he had washed before, but they kept getting away from him and curving around to prove that it was only water on them and not shampoo after all. The essentials of the ceremony wouldn’t change the thickness of his hair, then. “Your hair is softer. And the scar.”  
  
Harry grunted, and said nothing else. His head was drooping forwards, as though some of the relaxation that Draco had assumed the touches would inspire in his muscles was happening in spite of himself. Draco smiled and rubbed the back of Harry’s neck with the shampoo, then guided him forwards so that the shower-spray splashed his hair.  
  
Harry spluttered, but his voice was normal when he spoke again. “And you like these changes?”  
  
Draco blinked some more, and wondered whether he would gain power if he confessed or if he kept silent. Before he could decide, Harry had come to his own conclusion, from the sound of the twig-dry chuckle in his voice. “Yes, of course you do. The more I look like a Malfoy and less like the boy you used to hate, the better it is for you.”  
  
“It’s not as though we’re going to have sex,” Draco reminded him, and shoved him forwards so that Harry caught himself with his hands on the wall of the shower. Draco blinked again. Harry acted as though he had done something like this before, despite his evident lack of experience with someone washing him. Draco shrugged it off and said, “But I do like that you’ll look more like part of my family. You can be handsome when you want to, you know. I don’t know why you continue to huddle in ragged clothes like the ones you wore here.”  
  
“No, you wouldn’t understand it,” Harry said, and remained silent for the rest of the time that Draco washed him. Well, other than a sharp intake of breath when Draco knelt down behind him and rubbed his fingers over Harry’s buttocks, ignoring the way that the cloth of the pants rucked under his fingers. Technically, the supplicant in the demi-wedding was supposed to go through this bathing entirely naked, but that wasn’t a requirement most of the time, and Draco preferred to leave Harry a little of his dignity.  
  
 _I’m not kind. But he can think I am, if he likes._  
  
*  
  
Harry reached up towards his hair the instant he got out of the shower, intent on feeling the softness for himself, but Malfoy caught his wrists. Harry tensed against the push he thought would follow, the way he had when Malfoy shoved him forwards under the water. That used to be one of Dudley’s favorite tricks, to sneak into the bathroom when Harry was taking one of his rare showers and shove him like that.  
  
“I have to dry your hair,” Malfoy said. “To prove that I can take care of you.”  
  
Frankly, Harry didn’t see what drying someone’s hair had to do with taking care of them, but he shrugged and followed the subtle—and not-so-subtle—pushes of Malfoy’s hands until he was sitting on a stool that was evidently right in front of him. He bowed his head and let his hair fall forwards around his face, shivering as the cool, wet strands started to drip. He no longer felt warm.  
  
The towel that Malfoy wrapped around him in the next few seconds helped with that, though, and so did the second one that he laid on top of Harry’s head. “All done with towels,” Malfoy said, when Harry murmured a question that he really didn’t know how Malfoy managed to make out. “Not charms. This is the way that the ancient ceremony was completed, and this is the way that I’m going to do it.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and went with it. In some strange way, Malfoy was right and it  _was_ pleasant to be dried like this, hands moving up and down his sides in smooth strokes instead of rubbing roughly the way that Harry always dried himself, or the quick, astringent tickling of a Drying Charm.  
  
He’d probably learn how to do this for himself, too. What would he have when he was a Malfoy but time?  
  
Harry shrugged to himself. That was one of the reasons he had made this choice, really, one of the things he had told Hermione would be no sacrifice. He  _wanted_ the time to think, to make decisions for himself. He’d swept straight from the Dursleys into Hogwarts, straight from Dumbledore’s murder into war, straight from the war into studying for his NEWTS and then Auror training. He deserved the chance, for once, to slow down and figure out what he wanted from his life.  
  
Then Malfoy lifted the towels and slapped the middle of Harry’s back. Harry jumped. Truthfully, it wasn’t a slap. It was just something sticky and warm that had no right to be there. Harry started to hunch his shoulders again, wondering if Malfoy had sacrificed everything to his idea of a joke and was going to rub urine on Harry or something.   
  
Or, maybe, this  _was_ part of the ceremony. Pure-blood families might do some really weird things, for all Harry knew.  
  
“Relax,” Malfoy said, as irritated as though he had warned Harry about this and Harry hadn’t listened. “It’s just lotion, mixed with balm. A good way to clean you up further, soften your skin, and heal any wounds that the new heir has.”  
  
Harry greeted those words with relief, and not just because it wasn’t urine after all. It was more soothing when Malfoy talked about all the things heirs had undergone down the ages, instead of it being Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter. “Oh. It smells nice.” The lotion did, a mixture of the spices that Malfoy had had in the shampoo he’d used on Harry and something else. Not flowery but woodsy, Harry thought, reminding him of some of the dark, secret places in the Forbidden Forest.  
  
“Another method of cleaning,” Malfoy said, but his voice was a little muffled. Maybe Harry’s response had taken him off-guard. He massaged the lotion in, and Harry leaned forwards and put his elbows on his knees and took it in.  
  
The hands moving on his shoulders, the way that Malfoy muttered to himself now and then when laboring over a particularly curved spot, the fact that Malfoy was completely focused on Harry right now and doing what had to be done…  
  
He  _liked_ it.  
  
Yeah, he’d never had half the luxuries that were apparently available to him here. But he could do better than live with them, the way he’d been assuming he would. He could learn to like them, to want them, to wallow in them.  
  
 _I’m more decadent than I thought._  
  
 _Or more human._  
  
Harry shrug-shoved the thoughts away, and heard Malfoy move off and put down whatever bottle or box he’d held on the floor. He started to stand up, but Malfoy immediately came back to him and said in a strange soft voice, “Hush. I’m not ready for you to move yet.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. That was a strange thing to say. Not “The ceremony says you can’t move yet,” but that  _he_ wasn’t ready.  
  
That made Harry wonder if they were getting away from the idea of heirs and demi-marriages in the past and what would ideally be done during them, and back into the personal Potter and Malfoy. Except his name wasn’t Potter anymore, and Harry was probably refining too much on a little sentence Malfoy said. He probably had one more lotion to put on or something. Harry tried to sit there patiently, his elbows on his knees and his head bowed forwards so that his hair dangled around his hands.  
  
Then Malfoy brought something else back, something with a lid that clinked and clanked, and when he touched the middle of Harry’s back with his hands coated in  _that_ , Harry gasped and tossed his head despite himself.  
  
It was so warm, so soft, so inviting, that it felt like Malfoy was sinking him into an upright bed of comfortable pillows already heated by someone lying in them. “What is  _that_?” he asked, when he could. His mouth was filled with saliva and it spilled down his chin, and he shut his eyes and turned his head when Malfoy began to move his hands away, wanting more, yearning after it.  
  
“This is another lotion,” Malfoy said, but his voice was so low that he didn’t sound smug. Or maybe he really wasn’t and Harry was listening too hard for him to be. Malfoy’s hands moved in a way that a smug person’s probably wouldn’t, up and down, over and over, and then in circles, rubbing in, taking, tracing, tracking.  
  
It was so good. This time Harry could only compare it to liquid sunlight. He whimpered and turned his head despite himself, seeking more of it, and Malfoy obliged him, spilling up onto his face.  
  
“A special lotion?” Harry asked, when he could breathe. “Kept for the ceremony?”  
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said. “And it’s supposed to help the person who’s marrying into the family bond more strongly to it, too.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask how that meant it would affect him, and then closed his mouth and sat there again. Because he, honestly, didn’t give a fuck about anything right now but the way that Malfoy touched him, the heat and the way it had begun to soak into his skin, easing some aches so old that he hadn’t even been aware they were still there.  
  
He laid his head back and floated on the motions of Malfoy’s hands. He doubted that he would enjoy anything else about the ceremony as much, but he might as well enjoy  _this_ while it lasted.  
  
*  
  
Draco became aware of a warmth like the lotion’s building in his own gut. He thought he could see why the ceremony called for this particular step in the current heir’s preparing the new heir. It bonded both of them, putting the new heir in such a vulnerable position and making the current one, also shortly to be a spouse of sorts, feel protective.  
  
Then Potter moaned, and Draco felt his mask of indifference crack and fall apart. No, it was more than that, although it was probably a part and the source of some of the references to this lotion that had puzzled him in his reading of books about the demi-marriage.   
  
This was his pleasure in giving  _Harry_  pleasure. Draco repeated the name silently, working it into the contours of his mind the way that his hands worked the lotion into the contours of Harry’s muscles.  
  
It wasn’t vulnerability, exactly, because Harry sagged forwards and abandoned himself to his own pleasure without seeming to care if Draco saw or not. He was open, though, his moans soft but persistent, and his panting loud enough to make Draco’s fingers flex. Draco had never seen him this way, and neither had the wizarding public, though his friends might have.  
  
Draco wouldn’t mind seeing him this way again.  
  
He held on to that thought. Like the thought of alliance from yesterday, it would make it possible to build something on this footing, to make the demi-marriage more than the struggle for control Draco had realized yesterday he couldn’t win. Harry had too many hidden strengths, too great a propensity for rearing up suddenly and proving that he wasn’t as much of a weakling as Draco had thought.  
  
So it would have to be something else. Because Draco’s family, and in particular the safety of his mother, mattered more to him than merely personal feelings.   
  
He stroked, and smoothed, and touched Harry’s hair, and only stepped back, with some reluctance, when the three double handfuls of lotion that the ceremony required were all gone and it was time to get dressed again. He cleared his throat, because Harry didn’t move right away. “That’s it,” he said. “We put on the robes now.”  
  
Harry turned to face him.  
  
Draco’s breath caught, because the relaxed, hazy green eyes, the gentle smile, the slightly tilted head, went home to him like a spear thrust. Harry didn’t seem to realize what he had done or the way Draco had reacted, because he nodded and said, “Thank you,” and stood up with the towel wrapped around his waist.  
  
Draco bit his lip and put the containers of lotion back in the basket he had used to carry them in, shivering a little.  
  
Yes, this was going to be different, in many ways, many ill-defined ways and ill-controlled ways, from the marriage he had thought he was going to have.


	7. The Ritual

Harry stepped out of the Manor, and shivered as air moved against his skin. He hadn’t thought a lot about what would await him outside. Malfoy had said the ritual had to take place on the grounds, so that was that. Maybe they would have an audience of watching house-elves, and clasp hands in a garden.  
  
Instead, he found himself standing on the steps of a raised platform arranged right outside the door, which ran up to the platform itself. Harry blinked and stared. It looked like it was made of weathered grey stone, with a kind of gazebo on the top, and he had no idea how old it was or where it had been before now.  
  
He glanced back over his shoulder at Malfoy, who only smiled grimly and stepped up behind him with a little push. “Go on, now,” he said softly. “The sooner we reach the top, the sooner the ritual can begin.”  
  
Harry began to climb. The steps were small but not that narrow or steep, which was good for him. Not only did he have his glasses on and some problems with depth perception sometimes, there was the fact that the green robe rippled up around his thighs with every motion and stood a chance of exposing more than he wanted to expose.  
  
He reached the top and bit his lip, glancing around. No sign of anyone watching. Well, of course not. Narcissa was still too sick to come out, and Ron and Hermione, although they’d asked Harry if he wanted them to come to the wedding, had gratefully accepted his negative. They didn’t want to watch him give his life up, Harry knew.  
  
 _ _Or so they’ll see it.__  
  
But Harry could feel the slow, iron-hard conviction moving in him, the way he had earlier, that he had made the right choice. If what Malfoy could offer him was one bit as luxurious as that lotion—and the time alone in particular should be—  
  
Then he would do a lot worse than offer to pay back a debt.  
  
Malfoy made an impatient little gesture behind him. Harry realized that he didn’t know how long he’d actually stood there staring into space, and turned around with a little flush of chagrin. Mercifully, Malfoy didn’t seem minded to notice it.  
  
“This is the place that all the demi-weddings happen,” Malfoy said quietly, indicating the stone platform. His voice was so neutral that Harry didn’t know if he was speaking the words of ritual now or just explaining it, the way he had been in the bathroom. “It appears each time that it’s needed and then vanished again.”  
  
Harry nodded. “And what about regular weddings?” he asked, less because he was interested than for the sake of something to say.  
  
Malfoy reared back a little so he was staring into Harry’s face. “They’re confirmed by private vows on this platform after the official wedding is over,” he said, after long enough that Harry had started to open his mouth to apologize. “It always appears when it’s needed.”  
  
 _ _The most comprehensible answer that I’m going to get,__ Harry thought. If he was Hermione, or if she had been around, he could have asked all sorts of questions about magical theory. But Malfoy didn’t seem interested in discussing that. Maybe because the platform was just part of a tradition to him, and not worth talking about further.  
  
Maybe because he had the same uneasy relationship to this particular tradition, at the moment, that Harry did.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and stretched his hands out in front of him, the way Malfoy had told him he would have to. His heart was beating a fast enough call that every part of his body felt flushed. Malfoy was the only one who knew exactly what Harry was feeling. He was the only one in the entire world who would  _ _know__ what the demi-wedding was, what lay between them—  
  
Or, well, he  _ _would__ be, if he wasn’t watching Harry right now with his forehead furrowed and his mouth slightly open. Harry let his hands drop.  
  
“I feed you first,” Malfoy said.  
  
Harry just nodded. He could have said that Malfoy hadn’t mentioned that along with the hand-holding thing when they dressed in the robes, but he wanted to go along, to get along, and not drive away the fragile feeling of empathy he felt right now. Tolerating luxury was one thing, and he could happily do that. Tolerating Malfoy was quite another. “All right. Where’s the food?”  
  
*  
  
Draco reached out and snapped his fingers, which made Ossy and Affy appear with the traditional wedding meal on neat wooden plates, on equally neat wooden trays, resting on a table of polished pine. He knew that because he knew the traditions, not because he saw it. At the moment, he didn’t think he could look away from Potter.  
  
 _ _Harry.__  
  
Yes, he had to remember that. Call him Potter and he was only exaggerating the difference between them, when the demi-wedding was meant to erase the differences, or at least the ones that would matter to the outside world: the differences of name and blood.  
  
Draco reached out to the left, and felt Ossy shift the table a little so that his hand landed on the right piece of food, a long, narrow cheese with a ring of embedded nuts studded along the top. Draco nodded so Ossy would know Draco was grateful for the assistance, and then held out the piece of cheese to Harry.   
  
Harry looked once at Draco, a quick flicker of his eyelids that someone watching the marriage could have mistaken for a blink. Then he opened his mouth, and Draco pushed the cheese slowly inside, stopping when he felt the nuts click against Harry’s teeth. He made a little circling motion with his hand, and Harry closed his mouth, his teeth flashing briefly before he buried them into soft yellow, hard brown, glittering white.  
  
Harry’s eyes widened, and he kept chewing until he had swallowed all of it. Draco smiled. He knew the particular musky taste of that cheese, piercing his throat, and the small bite of nut Harry would have got along with it made it all the better.  
  
When he started to reach after it, though, Draco shook his head and laid the cheese aside, picking up the next dish, chicken flesh roasted until it was tender and falling off the bone, then rubbed with a compound of roasted tomatoes and olive oil. He held it out, a little ivory dish with black on the inside, although what the black was he didn’t know.  
  
Harry flicked his eyelids again, and then bent his head. Draco had to nod in approval, or would have if he wasn’t already holding his neck stiff, hoping everything would work. Yes, Harry had learned fast. The new heir wasn’t allowed cutlery or even his fingers to use at the feast. He was supposed to take everything from his new guardian’s hand, on trust, to taste it and swallow it without the option to pull it out of his throat before he choked.  
  
Some of the books said that Malfoy heirs had poisoned their prospective spouses that way, and secured the lands under dispute.  
  
But Draco would inherit nothing new if Harry died in this moment, so he didn’t need to worry about that. He watched as Harry bobbed his head, uncertain, and then pulled loose a strip of chicken and managed to eat it with only a few flips of his tongue and clicks of his teeth. His eyes closed in the same bliss he had shown when Draco rubbed the lotion on him.   
  
Draco wanted to reach out and touch his face. But his parents had taught him young that he couldn’t have everything that he wanted, and in any case, family always came first. He set the dish of chicken down and reached for the next, the eggs boiled and sliced and salted and covered with a mixture of paprika and other spices, the yolk churned until it was the color of new spring grass.  
  
Harry cocked his head like a curious bird. Draco wondered if he was making the connection: everything Draco fed him came from an animal. That was deliberate. In the old days of the demi-marriages, those foods were more luxurious and took longer to prepare than any fruit or vegetable dish, and using them was an indirect boast that the Malfoy heir—the one born so—had the ability to take care of anyone who depended on him.  
  
But although Harry looked at the table, briefly, for a moment, where peaches swimming in cream awaited, he also opened his mouth, and Draco pushed the slices of egg in, smiling when Harry immediately closed his lips around them.  
  
Harry’s eyes closed. Draco wished for a moment that he was good enough with Legilimency to slip in and out of Harry’s mind undetected. Then he might know what was happening there right now, and even taste the spices for himself, the bursting paprika and something yellow and drifting that might have been saffron or just a bit of yolk.  
  
*  
  
Harry knew that a meal as wonderful as this was a dream, and that he would wake in a few minutes and lament the ending of it, even though waking up would also mean that he wasn’t about to be married to Malfoy.  
  
So much  _flavor._ That was what he had been missing, all his life, in so much of his food, and not even known it until this moment. He had wanted the spices, and the leap of sweetness that tasted like nothing at first and then burst into glowing fire in the middle of his tongue, and the burning heat that made his face flush. He ate as much as Malfoy would permit him, and tried not to drool when Malfoy took away the rest of it and presented the next dish, because the next one would probably taste just as good, in a different way.  
  
Was this what he had been missing by not learning to cook for himself, the way that Hermione had once told him he should? He loved Molly, but her cooking wasn’t the same as this, or it was always the same as itself, sweet and familiar and warm. He had thought he was tasting the best lunches of his life when he was over at her house.  
  
He wanted to eat a full meal at the Manor, suddenly, house-elves in attendance and all. He’d had some of this delicious food, or delicious food of a different kind, when Ossy served him the other day, but—  
  
The peaches in cream were a new delight, and Harry leaned his head back and swayed on his feet as the sweetness threatened to overcome him. Malfoy supported him with a hand on his back, chuckling in a way that Harry should have found embarrassing. He didn’t, though. If this ritual was meant to encourage dependence on the person he was marrying, well, it was succeeding.   
  
And Malfoy already knew that Harry had never bought food like this for himself, or enjoyed luxuries like this; he knew that from Harry’s reaction to the lotion. Harry didn’t need to hide what he was feeling out of a false pride.  
  
“Can we have some of this later?” Harry whispered to him.  
  
Malfoy answered from so close that Harry opened his eyes to see  _how_ close, and found the grey eyes drifting right next to his face. “Not the same food,” he said. “But there will be a wedding meal, and food like this here.”  
  
Harry swallowed, and nodded, and accepted the next piece of the meal, a foaming milk poured directly from the glass into his mouth, Malfoy’s hand carefully cupping his chin, and it was thick and glorious. He wanted to get married, right now, for the same reason that he’d wanted the privacy the Manor’s rebuilt wards could give him.  
  
He wanted to do things for other people. He would always want to make up for the harm he had caused when he drew on the life-force of people who had not agreed to help him, even if it was harm he hadn’t known about. But he wanted to do things for himself, too. He had floundered around a bit since the war, in fact, trying to find out what it  _was_ that he liked. He’d had too few chances earlier in life to discover what it was he adored and needed.   
  
Now he knew. The flowers of sweetness on his tongue, and the thickness of clotted cream in the back of his throat, and the way that he licked at his teeth and palate and still hadn’t removed all the taste from them.  
  
“It’s the end.”  
  
It took Harry a moment to realize that he was hearing Malfoy’s voice, and in what context. He opened his eyes and blinked. Malfoy stood in front of the wooden table, regarding him with eyes bright enough to dim falling stars, and the house-elves faded with the rest of the food. Harry mourned to see it go.  
  
“The end of the ritual?” he asked, when he could shake enough of the trance from his mind. “We’re demi-married?”  
  
“It’s the end of the meal,” Malfoy said, and reached out for something standing in a wooden holder fastened to the platform. Harry wasn’t prepared to swear that that holder had existed before, but then again, the platform hadn’t been there yesterday, either, so that wasn’t as strange as it might have been otherwise.  
  
Harry stepped back in spite of himself when he realized it was a long, light, flexible wooden rod. His hands formed narrow fists in front of him, and his mind stormed him with images of the Dursleys, and Snape, and Voldemort, and everyone else who had punished him in the past.  
  
Then he forced himself past that, too. So he had made sacrifices, and it seemed that he had discovered there was something worth sacrificing  _for_ , even if they were purely decadent and material things and he had thought he wouldn’t want them. At least this time, if he underwent a whipping or something, someone  _would_ feed him afterwards.  
  
He met Malfoy’s gaze. “You’re going to use it on me?”  
  
Malfoy gaped at him. Harry’s back relaxed. Malfoy held the rod out in front of him and said, “This is a  _barrier,_ Harry, which we’ll get rid of together. To symbolize the barrier between our families, and the way it’ll come down.”  
  
Harry nodded and reached out to put his hands on the rod, next to Malfoy’s, but Malfoy wasn’t done yet. “You thought I was going to  _hit_ you with it?”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “It looked like something that you would use for hitting people,” he said. “I mean—not you personally,” he added, because Malfoy had gone still and had a glaze over his eyes, and Harry knew that he had to say something to make that right. “I just mean—something that would be useful if you wanted to. And I don’t know everything the ritual entails. There was a ritual bathing. Why not a ritual whipping?”  
  
*  
  
Draco had many things that he wanted to say, but for once he listened to his own instincts and went with the one that he most wanted to know the answer to first. He might have opened the path to Harry’s honesty through his shock. Many things could close that door, though.  
  
“The ritual is meant to bring us closer together,” he said quietly, shifting his hands back and forth on the rod. Harry followed his gestures, and part of Draco calmed. They were still doing things in sync, then, which meant they had not abandoned the meaning of the demi-wedding. “Do you think you would ever trust me again after I had struck you?”  
  
Harry went on peering at him, as though Draco had asked a much harder question than that. Finally he said, light in tone, light in body, light in his hold on the barrier, “It’s a  _wedding._  And a tradition. I know that of your own free will, you never would have touched me and spread lotion on my back, either. But the usual rules are suspended here. I did think that you might have to whip me, yes.”  
  
Draco shook his head and took a step forwards. Harry mimicked him, and the rod ended up pointed to the sky between them. That wasn’t the right position, but right now, Draco didn’t care. “There is no violence,” he whispered in this. “The Malfoys might have wanted to brag and show off in ceremonies like this, but there would be no point if we ended up hating each other.”  
  
Harry smiled with his lips alone. “We already hate each other, Malfoy. This wouldn’t have changed anything. And I know when I chose this that I was going to have to go through a lot to get what I wanted.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. “What do you want?”  
  
“Atonement. To pay the debt. And luxury, to my surprise.”  
  
Draco felt the words pass through him like a shock, and half-shook his head. Well, he had wanted honesty, and this was what it got him. He sighed, opened his eyes, and found himself regarding Harry bleakly. “This is the way that we have to do the ritual. I’ll step back. You do the same thing, so that the rod is parallel between us again.”  
  
Harry smiled, as if to say that Draco calling the rod by that name confirmed him in the thought that this was a punishment. But he also moved, stepping back until the rod straightened out and half-floated between them, held by both their hands. His breath came slow and steady. He met Draco’s eyes and nodded.  
  
“This is the barrier between us,” Draco whispered, caressing the smooth wood. He didn’t know what it was; it had seemed sufficient that it was the dark color of good nuts and flexible enough to fit its purpose. Now Draco wished he had asked, if only to give Harry more answers. “And we must push against it and break it down. Do you understand? Are you ready to push?”  
  
“Ready,” Harry whispered, and Draco shivered in the wake of that word pressing against his skin.  
  
Draco leaned forwards from his side, and Harry from his. Draco watched the muscles straining in his forearms, and wondered what Harry thought of the Mark he could glimpse on Draco’s.  
  
He never seemed to look there, though. His eyes remained on Draco’s face, and Draco looked into them for long, silent seconds, as the wood between them bent, the face of a man who had believed that Draco would offer him violence but had been prepared to endure it anyway, for the sake of paying back his debt.  
  
Something Draco had depended on, when he had gone to Potter at first. He had been desperate and hurting and angry, and this was the only thing he could think of to keep his family safe. And that Potter would agree was a given, because he had that delicate Gryffindor sense of honor, and that guilt complex.  
  
But now…  
  
Draco found himself wondering what it would be like to have someone like that as part of the family, someone who considered obligations the most sacred thing in the world.  
  
The wood broke. Harry stumbled. Draco did the same thing, but caught himself and balanced against Harry, the way Harry was balancing against him. Harry shivered and shifted his head to the side, but Draco breathed gently on him, and he froze, his head still turned and his eyebrows arched in silent question.  
  
“We catch each other,” Draco whispered, the words flowing forth easily from his lips. “We brace each other. We protect each other. Can you swear your honor to serving me and mine, commit yourself to our family?”  
  
Harry blinked and seemed to think deeply, although it wasn’t more than a moment before he replied. “Yes. I can.”  
  
Draco nodded, and stepped back to turn around and face the mist that curled up either side of the platform. The books had said it would come, when both participants in the demi-marriage sincerely meant what they said. Draco slid his robe off, and felt Harry start. He must not have realized that Draco was naked beneath it, the way he was, although they had stripped in the same room.  
  
“All barriers have to come down,” Draco told him, quietly, soberly, meeting his eyes. There was still too much he didn’t understand, and questions he wanted to ask, but for the moment, those had to be subordinate to the needs of the ritual.  
  
 _For the moment._ It would not always be so, and for the first time, Draco found himself content that it should be so.  
  
“I—right,” Harry said, whatever he’d been about to say swallowed like all the rest of his apparent defiance, and he peeled the robe off, wincing a little, as though he expected Draco to make mock of him. He’d taken off his pants when he put the robe on, at Draco’s insistence, and he was completely naked now, his cock hanging pliant and limp between legs that were even more muscled than Draco had realized.   
  
Draco smiled at him and held his arms out in front of him, extending them to their full length, showing Harry the Dark Mark. “All other allegiances fade before this,” he said, his voice ringing with the resonant tones of ritual. The mist rose higher and crept towards him, in shimmering silver curls. “All other questions leave, and this remains. Can you accept it, Harry? That I will be loyal to you, and my loyalty to Voldemort is a passing fancy in comparison to this?”  
  
The name spilled forth from his lips like the butter he had fed Harry earlier, and Harry’s head came up as though listening to his name shouted from a distance. He nodded, finally, when Draco had begun to feel as though the bones in his arms would crack and the mist had eddied in the same place for a long time.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, and pushed the fringe on his head aside, revealing the dragon. “I know the scar already changed, so I don’t know how much proof of my loyalty I can offer you, but—”  
  
“You place the family before anything else,” Draco interrupted. “Your own personal safety. Your likes and dislikes. Your friends.”  
  
Harry had been nodding along on those first two things—of course, they didn’t matter to him as Draco had thought they did, not if he was willing to give them up even as much as he already had—but he froze on the last, and his head twitched to the side, not a complete negative, but enough of one that the mist crept eagerly closer.  
  
“No,” he whispered.  
  
“I won’t hold you away from them unnecessarily,” Draco said, trying to keep his voice as strong as it had been while they went severely off-track in the ritual. “I won’t tell you that you can’t keep being friends with them. But your first loyalty has to be to  _me_ , Harry. To us. To the family, and not more than that.”  
  
Harry watched him with wide, startled eyes, and then said, “My greatest loyalty has  _always_ been to Ron and Hermione.”  
  
Draco’s desire to ask why no one in Harry’s family deserved it turned to ashes as he saw the mist coming closer and closer. And anxiety sharpened his tone into knives even though he knew that it was the worst tack to take with Harry right now. “I just said all the things I wouldn’t do! Can’t you  _promise_?”  
  
“I don’t work like that, Malfoy.” Harry was remote again, as much the snooty Boy-Who-Lived as Draco had expected to find him in hospital. “I won’t say something I don’t mean.”  
  
And the mist swept over the platform in a cool, devouring rush, and Draco felt dozens of small, cold teeth form against his skin.


	8. A Marriage With Teeth

Harry fell back a step as he watched the mist swirling up around Malfoy. What the  _fuck_ was going on? He had assumed the mist was a sign the marriage was going according to plan, a decorative touch created by ancient Malfoys or something, but this was not a sign that anything was going to plan that he could think of.   
  
He looked for Malfoy, automatically trying to orient himself by what he saw in the faces of people around him, but he had vanished behind the mist. When Harry extended his hand, his fingers vanished into it without denting it or moving it aside.  
  
And then the pain began.  
  
It crawled up his wrists, it nipped at his veins, it shredded skin and knocked it aside. Harry went to his knees not because of that, though—it was really no worse than the stream of magically altered bees that a Dark wizard had unleashed on him a few years ago—but because of the screams he heard from beyond the mist.  
  
“Malfoy!” he shouted.  
  
The screams didn’t stop. Harry cursed, steadily, and ignored the darting teeth around him to fight his way forwards. But although the mist bent around him this time the way it hadn’t earlier, it flowed back immediately, and enveloped him, and Harry realized that he had no idea what direction the edge of the platform lay in. Malfoy’s screams enveloped him the same way, so that he couldn’t navigate by them, either.  
  
The screams trailed off into a sob, and Harry forgot all about sane things like navigation.  
  
“ _Malfoy!”_  he shouted again, and began to run. He didn’t care if he tripped off the edge of the platform, or if he slipped on the blood that was now flowing down his arms from his wrists. Those screams—he had to find Malfoy and soothe them. He had to make sure that they stopped. He could never stand hearing someone sound like that, not from pain that he knew he had caused.  
  
He stumbled into someone, finally, and put his arms around Malfoy. But the mist was closer, was flowing under his very skin, and Malfoy’s flailing arms knocked him aside. Harry tried to bounce back in, but now Malfoy lay on the stone and rocked back and forth. His wounds were minor, but the screams weren’t.  
  
Harry knelt down beside him and closed his eyes. He had no doubt that his refusal to swear loyalty to the Malfoy family alone had caused this, but he had no idea what he was supposed to  _do_ about it. He couldn’t say he would turn his back on his friends. They would never forgive him. He would never forgive himself.  
  
But he would also never forgive himself if Malfoy died during the process of the demi-marriage, this process that was supposed to be about  _saving_ him and his mum. Harry hadn’t even seen Narcissa yet, he didn’t know how big the damage from the first ritual was, but he knew that the loss of her son would probably kill her.  
  
He put his arms around Malfoy and held him firmly, ignoring all the thrashing, and said in a loud, clear voice, “I promise to swear loyalty to the Malfoy family above my own personal likes and dislikes, above my own petty desires.”  
  
The mist swirled, but Malfoy continued to shake, although he sounded as though he had torn something in his throat and he wasn’t screaming now. It wasn’t enough, Harry knew, and plunged into his compromise. Because the mist would probably also know if he lied and simply swore loyalty with the idea of making it conditional and really picking his friends later.  
  
“I promise to be  _as_ loyal to the Malfoy family as to my friends,” he said, loudly, and winced at the thought of what Ron and Hermione would think if they were here. But they weren’t, and he had chosen this, and he had said after the war that he wouldn’t run from the consequences of his choices, that he would bear them, that he would manage it, somehow. “Is that enough? Because anything else would be a lie, but I knew coming into this—I should have guessed, anyway—that the ritual would demand something like this.”  
  
The mist hesitated. Harry stared back into it and held his breath, feeling Malfoy’s fragile, ragged heartbeat against his hands.  
  
*  
  
Draco could barely breathe through the pain, the  _surprise_ of the pain.  
  
Yes, perhaps he should have known that demanding Harry abandon his friends would result in something like this. But it wasn’t abandonment, precisely. It was asking for his loyalty.  
  
And Harry had already heard and spoken words that he knew would alter his appearance and strip away his name and put the Malfoy family first. Draco had thought he understood and was only objecting for form’s sake.  
  
 _Apparently not,_ he thought, his breath heaving in and out as he realized that he was all right now, that the biting had stopped, and the mist had retreated to coil slowly around the platform. He listened to Harry speak, and opened his eyes. This was a respite only, he knew. The mist would return as soon as Harry refused to promise more.  
  
“That’s not going to be enough,” he whispered. “You have to be—you have to be willing to give  _everything_ up. You told me you were.”  
  
“My independence is one thing, and my friends another,” Harry said, his arms tightening until Draco thought he might be able to lift Draco from where he lay by the simple pressure of his muscles. “What’s  _happening,_ Malfoy?”  
  
“Call me Draco,” Draco said, his lips shivering as he answered. His teeth chattered for a moment, but he didn’t think Harry was the kind of person who would ignore Draco’s words because of that, or pretend he couldn’t understand him.  
  
 _No, the problem comes because he listens to only the literal sense of words and not the spirit, or prevents himself from recognizing what that spirit conceals._  
  
“Draco, fine, right,” Harry said. “Because Malfoy is my name now, too.” Draco nodded, grateful that he wasn’t the one who needed to repeat the lesson, and lifted his head to see Harry eyeing the mist. “But what in the world  _is_ this stuff? And why did it pop up even before I had my little temper tantrum?”  
  
Draco grimaced. He thought he had discovered another source of the problem, if Harry could discuss and dismiss his own behavior that way. Perhaps it was a learned skill, attempting to minimize his impact on the world—which he couldn’t be fond of—by pretending that he was the same as any naughty child.  
  
But for now, Draco was going to answer the questions, and try to get used to the feeling of Harry’s hands on his skin. They were far warmer than Draco’s, or than his mother and father’s hands had ever been, branding him. “The mist is supposed to be the gate, or form the gate, through which we pass united when the demi-wedding is done. It was rising because we were near the end of the ritual. And it hurt us because people who have made sacrifices for the family don’t like to hear someone else saying he won’t.”  
  
Harry turned his head and stared into the mist. “So  _this_ is the spirits of all your ancestors who went through this kind of marriage?”  
  
“Not spirits,” Draco said, fumbling for words. He hadn’t thought he would need to explain because he hadn’t thought it would come up, but even more, he hadn’t expected Harry to ask. And how to explain something that had lain, like the knowledge of how to walk, behind his eyes for most of his life? “Part of them, though. The—sacrifices. The—sharpness they had to go through for this. And we’ll have to suffer that sharpness if we refuse to consummate the ritual the way it should be consummated.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “You  _said_ we wouldn’t have to have sex.”  
  
Draco smiled dryly. “Some people would say that we’re close to it, the way we are at the moment,” he muttered, feeling Harry’s bare knees press up against his bare back. “But I didn’t mean that kind of consummation. This is the  _final_ promise, Harry, and you held back when you should have been yielding to it as a matter of course. You gave all the initial promises already. I thought you knew what you were doing.”  
  
“Not this,” Harry said. “I could walk through a fire and burn all the photographs I have of my parents and forget that I’d ever lived on my own, and that wouldn’t be a betrayal of Ron and Hermione in the same way.”  
  
“I heard you,” Draco whispered. “I heard you promise the mist that you would at least try to give the family the same level of faith.” He gestured to the mist and the way it danced back and forth next to the platform, like a beast caged for years who saw an open door. “I think that’s all that holds it back from attacking us now. It’s waiting to see whether that’s true. And what will happen if something the family needs you to do conflicts with something your friends want you to do?”  
  
Harry’s smile twisted.  _Well, at least he has the Malfoy smirk down,_ Draco thought. “I find it interesting that you phrase it as something you  _need_ , but that you think Ron and Hermione would just  _want_ ,” he said.  
  
Draco held his gaze. What could he say but the truth as he saw it? And if it was bizarre to say it while lying on his back over Harry’s lap, the whole of the demi-marriage hadn’t been much more normal. Draco’s “normal” life did not include fighting dragons with a marriage ceremony or admiring Harry Potter’s arse.   
  
“We need you,” he said. “My mother and I. Your friends could need you, but not in the same way.” Harry stared at him, and Draco paused and reached for the right words. If he didn’t find them now, he thought, then he never would, and Harry would walk away from this, or try to. He couldn’t insult Weasley and Granger, no matter the temptation.  
  
 _There are bigger things at stake here than my dislike of them._  
  
And that, weirdly and paradoxically, freed him. Perhaps it could function as a complement to the fact that Harry thought of his friends as the center of his universe. Draco held his eyes and spoke calmly. “I accept that your friends will need you, that they’re the most important people in your life. We’re not asking to  _replace_ them. We are asking to take the place of people who’ve been missing ever since you were a year and a half old.”  
  
Harry’s eyes opened, closed. Then he said, “If you think that you can be my bloody father—”  
  
“ _Family_ ,” Draco cut in firmly. He knew that Harry had been raised by Muggles who were related to him by blood, because he’d heard his Aunt Bellatrix talking about the blood wards, but for some reason, Harry didn’t consider them family in that same light. Well, good. Draco would control his curiosity on the matter, because that meant his course was clear before him. “Friends and family don’t always get along, but most people can negotiate the line. Pansy’s mother had friends her father didn’t approve of. Blaise was friends with a Hufflepuff. My father disagreed with me about whether it was appropriate for me to do some of the same things that Vincent and Greg’s fathers let them do. We handled it. It wasn’t the end, and it wasn’t as though—I didn’t have to pick Vincent and Greg over my family. They just existed, and they were in the same life, my life, and I think you can do a similar thing.”  
  
The silence stretched. The mist had not come back towards the platform, to Draco’s great relief. He lay there and looked up at Harry, and Harry crouched there, staring back.  
  
“The Weasleys are my family,” he said at last.  
  
“In the same way as Ron and Hermione are your friends?” Draco asked, knowing he was greatly daring to use their first names, but despite the way Harry glared at him, Draco thought he’d managed to prevent a sneer creeping in. “Or are you closer to them, and the Weasleys are your family because of Ron?”  
  
For the first time, Harry hesitated. Then he said, “I hurt George and Andromeda in that spell I performed as well as you and your mum. I feel the urge to make it up to them in the same way.”  
  
“Not in the same way,” Draco said hastily, because the mist was coming nearer. “I mean, the intensity of your desire is the same, but are you really going to swear your last name away and become a Weasley or a Black?”  
  
Harry glared again. “No, because you were the only one  _stupid_ enough to demand that of me.”  
  
Draco shook his head. He  _had_ to make Harry understand, and still the mist came nearer and nearer, and he thought he could catch the sound of teeth munching the air from the corner of his ear. “ _Listen_ , Harry. You said that you were willing to do almost anything to make it up to them. And to me, to us. Why are you balking now? I don’t understand.”  
  
“This is part of the  _almost_ ,” Harry said, and his arms tightened under Draco until Draco thought he was going to throw him from the platform.  
  
Draco wanted to scream. They had come so far, he had succeeded in fooling himself that the rest of it would be—not painless, but less painful than it had been. He didn’t know how to go back now, and he didn’t know if there  _was_ a reversal that the demi-marriage and the parts of his ancestors left behind would accept.  
  
Which meant it was up to him. Which was nothing new, either. He was the current Malfoy heir, and the only one who had the legal and the magical power—weak as that was—to solve the current situation. Harry was stronger than Draco was, but it meant nothing if he refused to use that power.  
  
“This is my vow to you, then,” Draco said solemnly, and put his hand on Harry’s. “I promise you that I will never require you to do anything that contradicts or goes against what your friends would ask.”  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes as though squinting down a tunnel. “What? You can’t possibly predict that.”  
  
Draco ground his teeth. Didn’t Harry understand that he was trying to  _work_ with him here, the way Harry had tried to work with the mist by swearing equal loyalty to his friends and to the family?  
  
Then he realized that, no, Harry probably didn’t think of it that way. And enough trouble had happened because Draco had assumed that Harry understood things it turned out he didn’t understand.  
  
“All right, Harry,” he said, as gently and soothingly as he could. “I’m saying that I will do  _my best_ to predict that. The way that I want you to do  _your best_ to live with both being a Malfoy and having Weasley and Muggleborn friends.” He was glad that he had had some practice, in the last years, avoiding saying the word “Mudblood.” Harry’s expression at the moment told him that it would have been the last straw for Draco to blurt that out now. “And if a situation comes where my demands could potentially conflict with theirs, I’ll do my best to step back and bow out.”  
  
Harry shook his head a little, eyes still locked on Draco. “You can’t predict that you can do that every time.”  
  
“No, not  _every_ time,” Draco snapped back, his temper flaring. “I’m trying to compromise again, as stupid as that appears to me when you keep refusing it! Sometimes I won’t be able to stop insisting. For example, if Weasley wanted a lot of money from the Malfoy vaults and wanted you to give it to him because it used to be your money, then I would have to say no.”  
  
Harry blinked, and shifted his grip on Draco again. The mist had reached the edge of the platform and was sliding little while tendrils towards them. Harry appeared to have no difficulty in ignoring it. Of course, Draco thought sarcastically. It hadn’t hurt Harry as badly as it had Draco.  
  
“Ron would never ask for something like that,” Harry said.  
  
“Good, then we’ve solved one problem,” Draco said, with forced lightness. “Look, this can  _work_. Your knowledge of your friends means that certain things I’m afraid they’ll ask for are probably paranoia. And my knowledge of my family makes me say that most of the time, we should be able to avoid tangling your loyalties. Isn’t that good enough? Isn’t that—can’t we go ahead with the marriage now?”  
  
Harry stared at him from eyes that looked as deep as forests. Draco held his breath and waited, trying to hold Harry’s gaze, too, and not think about the pain.  
  
Because Harry would be pushed to a certain length, and no further. Draco thought the demi-marriage might accept Harry’s vow of equal loyalties, since the mist hadn’t attacked so far, but Harry was capable of refusing if he felt pushed.  
  
And then Draco would probably die. He  _wanted_ to live, wanted to win his magic back again and see his mother healed.  
  
Wanted to know Harry.  
  
It hit him so hard that he opened his mouth and let the words spill forth before he thought about it. “When did getting to know  _you_  become one of my goals?”  
  
Harry laughed, and the mist halted and swirled. Harry bent towards him. “All right,” he said. “I vow loyalty to your family above my own needs, above my likes and dislikes, above all but the demands my friends must make where the loyalties are going to conflict. And you swear loyalty to me as  _my_  family, taking that place in my life.”  
  
Draco didn’t hesitate. This was the best compromise he would get, and while Harry’s words weren’t the traditional ones of the demi-marriage vow, being hurt by the mist wasn’t usual, either, or the specific demand about friends, which Draco had had to add in because Harry had no blood relatives to want him back. He reached up and laid his left hand over Harry’s heart, drawing down Harry’s right one to rest above his. “I so swear.”  
  
The mist vanished.  
  
*  
  
Harry raised his head, blinking. He hadn’t realized how much the mist was pressing against him, how much of his attention and time it demanded, until it was gone, and he could swallow without feeling as though something was about to knife into his throat.  
  
 _If you felt that way, why did you let it go that long without swearing loyalty to the Malfoys?_  
  
But Harry had to shake his head when he thought that. It  _wasn’t possible_ for Malfoy to coerce him against his will, and that went double for Malfoy ghosts that left pieces of their soul, or whatever, behind in mist to bite their descendants. He still didn’t know how well these vows would work, but they were both still alive. That was enough for him right now.  
  
He reached down for Malfoy’s hand, but Malfoy pulled back from him and stood on his own. Harry rolled to his eyes as he got to his feet. Until two seconds ago, Malfoy had been perfectly happy lying in his arms. It made sense that disdain of touching someone he still thought of as a Mudblood would make him get up on his own.  
  
But maybe Harry had been wrong and it was simple pride that had propelled Malfoy to his feet, because Malfoy was looking at him in a way that made Harry self-consciously touch his face, then his hair. “What?” he asked. “Did I get mud on it or something?”  
  
“This is the part where we look at each other,” Malfoy murmured. “The part of the demi-marriage where the illusions have been dismissed—at least, so one would assume with the barriers broken and the vows made—and we can see what we’re getting.”  
  
Harry flushed. That was probably part of the purpose of getting naked, too, he thought, not just shattering a final barrier. He bit his lip and tried to look at Malfoy in a neutral way, without embarrassing either of them. “Well, look your fill, but make it quick if you can,” he said, snapping a little. “I don’t know how much naked man I can take.”  
  
Malfoy smiled softly. He moved a step nearer and spread his arms, displaying himself. Harry mimicked him, although something Malfoy had said was bothering him.  
  
He wouldn’t have said it, but lack of communication had not proven to be a great strategy so far, so he would. “Why does it matter how we think the other one looks physically? You said that demi-marriages weren’t consummated in the normal way.”  
  
“Oh, they aren’t,” Malfoy said, his voice distracted. Harry wondered why, then saw that Malfoy’s eyes were locked on his chest, on the scar that the locket Horcrux had left, and flushed. Malfoy didn’t seem to have noticed, although his eyes did grow a little sharper. “But it’s still important that no Malfoy have a deformed or impotent spouse.”  
  
“Of course,” Harry muttered, privately resolving to punch the ancient Malfoys in the jaw if he ever met them walking down the street. He spread his arms further, swallowing all the while, and let Malfoy continue to look at him.  
  
Malfoy was—interesting. Harry could see some scars that he knew the story of, like the silvery slashes on Malfoy’s chest that probably came from  _Sectumsempra._ They really did look like a lion had had its claws in Malfoy, and dragged him around a while before letting him go.  
  
Harry shivered. Sometimes he didn’t like to think about what he had done during the war. But it did have to be faced.  
  
Then there were the scars leading down from Malfoy’s neck on either side of his collarbone, ones that aimed at his heart. Harry had felt them when he touched the skin above Malfoy’s heart a few seconds ago, he remembered. They were thicker than the ones Harry himself had left, raised. Harry didn’t say anything about them, but privately memorized the look of them, so that he could research them later.  
  
 _Or you could just ask._  
  
The thought made him blush further, for some reason. Malfoy laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh Harry would have had to kill him for. “You embarrass easily,” Malfoy whispered. “Not many partners, then?”  
  
“Don’t believe that rubbish you read in the papers,” Harry said, which Malfoy could translate any way he liked, and went on looking.  
  
Malfoy’s muscles were wiry, his legs long and slender. Harry’s eye skipped past Malfoy’s cock; he was just glad that it wasn’t hard, because then he would make comparisons he did  _not_ want to make. Malfoy’s feet were long and slender, too, and, Harry reckoned, nice. It wasn’t as though he had much of an opinion on feet.  
  
He looked back up, at Malfoy’s face, and waited for him to get bored of staring.  
  
*  
  
Some of Harry was familiar to Draco, but he had only really looked at his back while he bathed him, so this was different.  
  
The first thought that hit Draco was,  _So many scars._  
  
Of course, one was used to thinking of Harry and scars in the same sentence, but this was different. It looked as though everything that had ever attacked Harry had left its marks on him. Draco could see small burns, bites, the suckers of stinging tentacles that only certain species of deadly plants left, slashes from hexes, and a long string of tiny little puncture wounds that were probably the brand of a close encounter with an Acromantula.   
  
 _He could have had someone help him with some of those scars. Dittany might—_  
  
But then Draco locked his eyes on a scar that wound across Harry’s inner thigh, right near his cock, where someone fucking him couldn’t possibly miss it, and paused.  
  
Yes, Harry almost certainly could have made  _some_ kind of difference in his body if he wanted. Despite the fact that he seemed to think money was for saving instead of spending, he had enough to afford access to the best Healers. He could have cleaned up the scars, cleaned up himself, made himself look bright and reasonable, expensive, a polished statue, in fact.  
  
But he hadn’t wanted to.  
  
Draco liked that. Not that he wanted to think someone ugly or approved of keeping scars on principle, but it said a lot for Harry’s honesty and reality, that Draco was seeing him as he was.  
  
He met his eyes again, and smiled. “Now,” he said. “The last part of the ritual.”


	9. The Gate

“What is that?” Harry asked, determined to keep his breathing smooth and the temptation he felt to lash out under control.   
  
Draco smiled at him again. It was easier to think of him as Draco than Malfoy now that they’d spent some time looking at each other naked, Harry realized. Not that he was attracted or thought  _Draco_  was particularly more interesting naked than  _Malfoy_ would have been, but at least it was something they’d both had to do, and that meant they were on an equal footing.  
  
“We have to pass through the gate that I mentioned,” Draco whispered, and reached out with a hand that seemed to ripple and drift in the air, as though the mist had come back and was clouding Harry’s vision. He blinked and shook his head. “Do you know what that means?”  
  
Harry kept his hand at his side. “No,” he said evenly. “And so far, we haven’t had good results when you  _assumed_ that I knew something instead of telling me what it was.”  
  
Draco’s hand dropped, and his smile wavered like it had. Then he inclined his head and murmured, “Forgive me, Harry. I do assume that too often. But this time, I only meant to tease. I knew you didn’t know.”  
  
“Oh.” Harry blinked, thrown. He had thought that Draco would keep teasing out of something like this, because neither of them wanted it and so the friendly relationship that teasing implied was out of the question.  
  
But that was an unquestioned assumption of his own, or so he saw when he thought about it. He didn’t  _know_ what their relationship was going to be like, because each of them would define it as they went forwards.  
  
He blinked again and held out his right hand, the one that Draco had been reaching for. “What is it?”  
  
*  
  
 _Bloody stubborn Gryffindor._  
  
On the other hand, perhaps it was best that he simply become used to discussing what would happen around them and with the ritual out loud now. It would save time and trouble in the long run.  
  
Draco took Harry’s hand, and held his eyes for a few seconds to make sure that there would be no backing away now. When Harry continued to look at him, even through a nervous swallow, Draco decided the moment was acceptable. “We have to walk through the gate that’s forming over there,” he said, and nodded towards the end of the platform behind them.  
  
He thought he saw Harry stiffen his shoulders before he turned around, but why that would unsettle him more than the rest, Draco didn’t know. Personally, he would have been more frightened of the mist that could devour him whole.  
  
The gate was made of braided white branches, extruded from the mist but not formed by it. Draco had no idea where they came from, what trees they had grown on. The books, in this case, were full of speculations but not information. The ribbons that bound the branches were bright, red and gold and green and silver. He heard Harry snort faintly beside him in acknowledgment of that.  
  
“Would all of them be green and silver if it were two Slytherins getting married?” Harry muttered.  
  
Draco smiled at him again, pleased beyond words that Harry had begun to show interest in the workings of the magic that he would have to study for years after this. Draco knew a lot about his family, but more than that, he knew the right kinds of questions to ask, which had made his research into the demi-marriage go much faster. This was the right kind of question.  
  
“No,” he answered. “Most of the time, those ribbons represent the family colors. If both spouses were of Malfoy blood, no matter how distant, those colors would appear. If they were of different families, we’d see that.”  
  
Harry quirked his eyebrows. “And since I considered Hogwarts my home, Gryffindor is as close as the magic could come to finding a family for me, and the only thing that was close for you, corresponding to me, was Slytherin.”  
  
“Well, if you’re stubborn, it’s a good thing that you’re not an idiot,” Draco muttered before he could stop himself.  
  
Harry smiled back. “I agree, or I would have died,” he said, and then swung the hand that held Draco’s. “And I  _have_ noticed that you aren’t telling me what happens when we pass through the gate. Or at least, you haven’t done it yet.”  
  
Draco grimaced a little and shook his head. “You know, you’re far too perceptive for your own good.”  
  
“And stubborn and an idiot at the same time?” Harry smiled, but there was reserve in his eyes that Draco found he wanted to remove. “Tell me, Draco. I think I can endure anything, as long as I  _know_ what’s going to happen.”  
  
Draco nodded. “We’ll see the most intense moment of each other’s lives. From the inside, as it were, although we’ll literally watch from the outside as we do in Pensieve memories. But we’ll feel each other’s emotions, the pain or the bitterness or the joy or the sorrow, whichever it was that burned that emotion into your memory.”  
  
Harry’s eyes closed for a moment. Then he sighed and opened them. “And I suppose that that happens because your ancestors were suspicious about the secrets their demi-spouses could be hiding?”  
  
“No,” Draco said. “It’s meant to emotionally bond us, and team us against the world.”  
  
Harry snorted with a heaviness that made Draco wince, despite himself. “Ah, yes. Those sacred demi-marriages.”  
  
“You knew the limitation of this kind of bonding as well as I did, Potter,” Draco told him, gaze lingering on his face. “If this wasn’t what you wanted, then you should have fought me harder when I demanded it of you.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows again. “Aren’t you violating one of your major tenets, right there? Calling me by the last name that the ritual is supposed to take away from me?”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and wished he had a god he could pray to for patience who would actually answer. Finally he said, “Are you willing to walk through the gate beside me, or not?”  
  
“I reckon I am,” Harry said, and Draco had the sense that he was keeping quiet about many other words that he could have spoken.  
  
Well, so was Draco, when it came to that. He opened his eyes and plunged towards the gate, dragging Harry along. Harry compensated for the pace, and then they were walking with each other. Harry’s mouth was set and his head lifted as though he intended to batter through any obstacles the gate might throw in their way.  
  
There would be none, Draco knew. The whole purpose of the gate was to let them through, to lead them from one kind of life into another, from the life where they knew nothing of each other, or at least not of the most intense memories of each other’s souls, into a life where they did.  
  
But for once, he didn’t want to tell that to Harry simply because the stubborn bastard didn’t deserve to know, and not because he assumed Harry would know it. Let him ask. Let him think there was no honor in being married to a Malfoy, even demi-married.  
  
 _Well,_ Draco reflected as they passed under the curved top of the gate,  _at least I can say that our marriage will never be boring._  
  
*  
  
Harry stood in a small alcove that looked as if it was part of Malfoy Manor, given the marble walls and the way they curved, but not one that he’d seen before. He glanced around curiously. It was a room off the ground floor, it looked like; Harry recognized the corridor that led to the dining room.  
  
And in the corner was Draco, vomiting.  
  
Harry blinked, and waited. There was no one else around, and no foul smell. Maybe Draco was sick.  
  
Then a shadow moved behind him, and a voice that made Harry reach for his wand even though of  _course_ he wouldn’t have one here said, “Aw, poor baby. Has the nasty smells made yous sicky?”  
  
Draco lifted his head and turned around, his hands clenched in front of him to keep them from shaking. Bellatrix Lestrange stood there staring at him in what looked like delight, her wand twitching in her hand. She nodded and smiled when Draco looked at her, and lifted her wand. “The baby needs to come back now,” she crooned. “Unless the baby wants his Lord to come after him.”  
  
 _In Malfoy Manor, during the time Voldemort was living there,_ Harry decided.  _Probably one of the first times that he had to torture someone for the bastard._  
  
Draco closed his eyes and opened them. “No, he doesn’t need to come after me,” he whispered. “I’ll come to him, Aunt. Just give me a minute.”  
  
But Bellatrix seized Draco’s arm and tugged him in the direction of the corridor. “You don’t tell the  _Dark Lord_ what to do, Baby Draco,” she whispered right into his ear, so close that Harry was surprised he could hear her. Maybe the memory would make sure that he heard everything relevant. “You come when he tells you, and you cringe for the favor like a good dog.”  
  
Harry took a step forwards, burning with indignation, and then stopped. This memory had already  _happened._ What was he going to do, act like an idiot in front of a woman who couldn’t see him and a boy who wasn’t the man he’d married?  
  
“I’m coming, aunt,” Draco whispered, and stumbled along behind Bellatrix, while she brushed his hair with one hand like she was petting the dog she had called him. The look on his face made Harry wish he  _could_ go back in time, and help him.  
  
But he just had to follow them into the Malfoys’ dining room instead. This time, he thought he knew what he would find. Voldemort sat at the head of the table with his hands folded in front of him, finger precisely placed against finger, and Nagini wound around him, her head in his lap.  
  
Harry felt himself tighten and stiffen all over. Voldemort was dead, Harry  _knew_ that, Harry had  _killed_ him, but it was still awful to see him like that, and to see Draco have to kneel down in front of him and bow his head, shaking. Harry had been afraid enough of Voldemort, and at least he knew from the prophecy that there was some way he could fight him and he’d had his friends on his side.  
  
Draco had no one. Harry did catch a glimpse of Narcissa sitting off to the side, her eyes shadowed, but she did nothing except close those eyes as Draco knelt there. Harry had no idea where Lucius was, and he doubted that Lucius would have dared to intervene even if he had been there. It probably wouldn’t have done anything but make matters worse.  
  
“Young Draco,” Voldemort said. His fingers never stopped scraping back and forth along each other, which made a rasping noise, although Harry didn’t know if that came from dead flesh or long nails or something else. “You have failed the tasks I assigned you. You have behaved as a member of your bloodline never should. And now you will not accept the  _simple_ task I offer you as a gift?”  
  
“I’m sorry, my lord,” Draco whispered, the muscles in his neck bobbing constantly as he swallowed. “I didn’t mean—of course I will be happy to accept any task you offer me.  _Anything._ Anything for you.” He lifted his head, his hands trembling in front of him, his eyes huge with tears that faded as he stared at Voldemort. Not because he was less afraid, Harry knew, but because he didn’t dare shed them right now.  
  
Voldemort nodded judiciously. Harry knew he didn’t believe Draco, any more than he needed Draco to torture people. It was purely his pleasure to set Draco a task that he didn’t want to do, and then watch him succumb to it.  
  
Harry had seen this happening in his visions, but that wasn’t the same thing, especially since he was always overwhelmed with Voldemort’s emotion and the pain through his scar in them. Here and now, watching it, it made him want to—  
  
To break things. To kick the table over, and slaughter Voldemort, and cut off Nagini’s head all over again, and bear Draco away.  
  
It wasn’t going to happen, so Harry watched instead, moving back so he could see both Draco’s face and Voldemort’s. He was feeling Draco’s emotions, he realized, but the trembling was a distant shake in his muscles and the fear burned in the back of his mind. He was so caught up in what was happening, or Draco was so numb, that it wasn’t more than that.  
  
At least, it wasn’t until Voldemort drew Draco to his feet with a touch that made his teeth chatter and turned him to face someone lying on the floor beyond the table. “Here, Draco,” he whispered, with sweetness that had more fangs behind it than Bellatrix could ever dream of. “Here is your first. Here is the pledge of your loyalty to me.”  
  
Harry didn’t know the man on the floor; he thought he must not have seen this particular man in the visions. But he was a Death Eater, as was obvious from the Mark on his arm, and red-faced, and red-haired, and sweating. His eyes were closed, as though that would block out the chains that bound him to the floor, and the circle sketched around him on it.  
  
Draco’s terror increased rapidly after that; Harry could feel Draco’s heart beating against the roof of his mouth. But he only knelt down and leaned his head against Voldemort’s hand for a moment as though seeking confirmation in what he was to do, before he stood up again and drew his wand.  
  
Harry felt a quiver that wasn’t his own in his hands, and winced. Draco hadn’t been able to kill, no, but his dislike of torture came from something deeper than that.   
  
 _He could cause mental suffering and revel in it, or not notice it, because there were no physical effects,_ Harry thought.  _Maybe he even used to think that he’d like to torture and kill people. But physical pain frightens him and revolts him. He must—he must have suffered a lot when we went through the mist, a few minutes ago._  
  
Hard to remember that the Draco he was watching right now wasn’t the one he was married to, that Harry couldn’t reassure him he had survived the mist and would survive this, too. But what mattered was that he knew something about Draco he hadn’t known before.  
  
Draco lifted his wand high enough that it looked like he was trying to pierce the ceiling, and whispered, “ _Crucio._ ”  
  
The man screamed as the spell struck him, and then he began to kick and struggle against the chains. Harry, narrowing his eyes, saw a faint gleam from the circle that surrounded the Death Eater, and winced. The circle was reflecting the Unforgivable Curse back, multiplying its energy and strength, and the Death Eater would be suffering from the pain redoubled.  
  
Draco fell back a step, but then he turned his head to the side, and the terror increased again, until Harry thought he would choke on it. Voldemort was watching him, his hands on Nagini’s head, slowly caressing.  
  
Draco dared do nothing but turn back around and cast the curse again. He hated pain, he didn’t want to hurt people, but he wanted to live more.  
  
And Harry felt the biting tendrils of his own remorse that sank into him, as he condemned himself for a coward, and part of him whispered that he wasn’t worthy to live.  
  
Harry shut his eyes and reached out. Whether he could touch the memory or not, this Draco deserved to have a bit of comfort.  
  
But the memory dissolved before he could touch it, and Harry found himself walking down a long, misty trail, with a gate ahead of him. He hastened towards it. He could live with what he had seen, but he couldn’t wait to get out of here and talk to Draco about it.  
  
*  
  
Draco looked up and blinked. He had expected to be in one of the places that Harry and his friends had confronted danger, which meant either Hogwarts or somewhere that he might not be familiar with.  
  
Instead, he stood in the Forbidden Forest, leaves beneath his feet, leaves tangled over his head, leaves whispering all around him. And in front of him stood Harry, his hand clenched around something, and his yearning eyes fastened in front of him—  
  
On ghosts.  
  
Draco had never seen any of them except Remus Lupin in the flesh, but he knew who they must be. There was James Potter, looking like some of the photographs that Draco had seen in his father’s news articles about the first war, carefully pressed and saved in an older album Draco had come across last year. And there was Lily Potter, her eyes gleaming and her hand stretched out as if she could touch his son.  
  
The other man, he didn’t know, not for sure, but he must be Harry’s mysterious godfather. His hair was wild, his face a mess, but his eyes shone.   
  
And the way Harry stood there, reaching out, the way he whispered, “Walk with me,” and turned to make the words real by walking through the Forbidden Forest to the clearing where Draco knew, because his mother had told him, that the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord waited—  
  
 _This is the way he looks when he feels he has a family._  
  
Draco followed Harry as they walked through the Forest, hoping with one corner of his mind that he wouldn’t have to watch the Dark Lord kill Harry, but with most of the rest working on and wrestling with the problem. Was it  _true_ that Harry could feel most at home, most with his family, when he was on his way to death?  
  
 _Why not? His parents were dead before he could remember them. The rest died over the years, and he might have lost others who were like parents to him, too; I wouldn’t know. Any family he had died. If he could join them, if he thought that he would join them…  
_  
Draco glanced back at Harry’s face. He walked with his head upright and his face shining as he stared forwards through the leaves of the Forest. He didn’t look like someone walking to his death.  
  
He looked like someone walking home.  
  
 _Yes. This is the only experience of family he’s ever had.  
  
And that’s why the gate thought it was important for me to know it. Because if I want to give him a family, if I want him to treat my mother and I like his family, I deserve to know the uphill struggle that we’re battling against._  
  
He hadn’t known it would be anything this severe, and for a moment he shivered. For another moment, he faltered.  
  
 _I shouldn’t have made this decision. Harry’s too broken. We can’t offer him anything he would accept, not when his idea of family is all dead people who can’t make any mistakes and who all loved him._  
  
But Draco remembered that they had passed through the mist and most of the demi-marriage ritual already, and the chances that they could turn back were exceedingly small.  
  
And he remembered something else, something that made him stiffen his shoulders and lift his own head as he walked along.  
  
 _Malfoys never offer second-best. I had to compromise with Harry on the issue of where his loyalties would go, but there’s no reason that I have to feel the same way about this. We’ll give him a family. We’ll teach Harry that you don’t need to be dead to be connected to him, that you can be living and take care of him._  
  
That might be enough, Draco thought, his mind split again, part on his own thoughts and part on the throbbing sweetness he felt from Harry, the quiet and solemn delight that was a mask over swirling terror and even stronger determination. He couldn’t offer love, he never would, but he could offer the luxuries that Harry had enjoyed so far, and the fact that he cared about whether or not Harry enjoyed them. Harry had cherished these people, that much was certain, but they couldn’t give him shelter or good clothes or a decent meal.  
  
Draco nodded, and walked with Harry, beside him whether Harry knew he was there or not, until the leaves closed in around him and his vision dimmed. The last sight he had of that place, of that memory, was Harry, still moving forwards, his head unbowed.  
  
*  
  
Harry stumbled as he came out of the gate. When he glanced back, the nodding, swaying branches were behind them, and so was the stretch of misty road he had glimpsed. For a moment, he wondered if walking through the gate and reversing their motion that way would unbind the marriage vows.  
  
Then he thought of the things the mist had tried to do to him and Draco already, and shuddered.  _I don’t think I’ll try it._  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Draco was close beside him, catching his arm to keep him from falling, his eyes so intense that Harry blinked. Then he stood up and nodded.   
  
“We both saw the right memories, I think,” he said quietly. He had learned that Draco was human after all, and had suffered, and that he could try to protect him from the same extremes of emotion and nightmare that Harry had been through since the war. He held out his hand. “From the look on your face,” he added, because while Draco was giving him an extremely odd stare, it wasn’t a hostile one.  
  
“Yes,” Draco whispered, and put his arm around Harry’s shoulders, drawing him closer. “In the meantime, there’s something we need to do.”  
  
Harry choked back a sigh and lifted his head. Draco stooped to kiss him like a great bird swooping down, and Harry reminded himself that Draco, while he  _contained_ that frightened and sickened boy Harry had seen, wasn’t him anymore.  
  
Draco lingered in the kiss longer than before. Well, they didn’t have a dragon riding their arses this time, Harry thought, drawing back and shaking his head a little. That tended to hurry you through your first kiss.  
  
“And that’s it?” he asked, when he could catch his breath again. “We’re demi-married.”  
  
Draco smiled, and the expression was bright and cutting as a Muggle laser. “We are.”  
  
Harry nodded and reached for his wand. The  _first_ thing he was going to do was conjure a robe.  
  
Draco got to it before he could, conjuring not only a robe but pants and socks for him. Harry nodded gratefully to him and turned away to put them on.  
  
“Oh, modesty?” Draco asked, voice low and snaky. “This late in the game?”  
  
“Yes, I still want it,” Harry said, and concentrated on not tripping over the edge of the platform while he put his socks on.  
  
There was silence behind him, and Draco said, “Then that’s enough.”  
  
Harry paused and glanced back at him, but Draco’s face told him no more than before. It was quiet and intense, like the silver eyes that watched him.   
  
Harry shrugged and sat down on the edge of the platform, which was just easier. “That’s all right, then.” 


	10. Introducing Harry Malfoy

“This is my mother.”  
  
Harry winced a little, automatically, as he stepped into the suite of rooms that Malfoy had kept locked until now. That had to do with the robe still swinging loose around his shoulders, and Malfoy’s hand low on his back—  
  
 _I reckon I ought to think of him as “Draco” all the time now, and not just during the ceremony._  
  
—and the fact that he had been the one who had caused this woman to suffer the horrific injuries that she had. He wondered if she would forgive him long enough to talk to him, or if she even knew about the demi-marriage intended to make him part of the family.  
  
He came to a halt a few steps from the bed, and looked at it. There was a limp hand there, and a softly yellow-tinged face visible in the middle of a mass of pale hair. Harry flinched from it despite himself. The face turned and the eyes opened, a misty grey that looked at him without hate and without recognition.  
  
“Mother.” Draco ushered him forwards, and Harry crossed the last few steps of plush carpet and stood looking down on his new mother-in-law. “This is Harry. He’s shed the Potter name and joined us, now.”  
  
Narcissa continued to look at him. There was nothing there, nothing of the woman who had saved Harry’s life in the Forbidden Forest, and nothing of the blame that Harry had thought he would receive, that it was only  _fair_ he receive. He didn’t know if she was senile or simply had too much to think about that didn’t include him. After a few minutes, her eyes wandered away from him, and a house-elf Harry hadn’t met yet popped into being at her bedside and handed her a glass of water. It had to support her wrist.  
  
Harry stood there, his hands clenching into fists despite himself and his eyes burning with pity. He watched the way the skin stretched over the bones in Narcissa Malfoy’s wrist, and nodded to himself.  
  
Then he turned around and faced Draco. Draco looked back at him, still, his eyes gone as distant as his mother’s. Perhaps he saw something in Harry’s face he didn’t expect.  
  
“I’m going to make it right for her,” Harry said. “I’m going to pay back the debt I owe to her. No matter what the cost.”  
  
*  
  
Draco almost smiled. It seemed Harry—Malfoy—had quite the habit of swearing impulsive oaths to pay back debts. That was the reason for the ceremony they had gone through, the pain he could still feel under his skin, the memory that tingled and burned and seared in his mind. He didn’t know what to do with that memory of Harry walking through the Forest yet. Well, he knew what he wanted to accomplish, but not the means he would use to do it.  
  
Now, though, he could hardly dishonor Harry for the wish to pay his mother back. Draco, too, wanted to see Narcissa up and about again. He dipped his head, slowly, let his eyes blink once, and then said, “You won’t find any opposition in that from me.”  
  
Harry let his hands fall open. “Right,” he muttered. “I didn’t think I would. It’s just—I’m so used to opposition that sometimes I tend to jump right there, if that makes sense. Without thinking about who’s going to oppose me and who’s going to help me.”  
  
Draco stood up and let Harry see his muscles stretching, the graceful stance he could take up, and the determination in his eyes. “I’ll help you.”  
  
Harry nodded, quickly. “Thanks. Do you have that list of Healers we were working on finished? Is there anyone you would prefer see her above anyone else?”  
  
Draco had to take a deep breath before he responded. Of course. This was the way it should be. He  _should_ have someone at his side to help him make the decisions, as his mother had been before this, as his father would have been had Fate been kinder.  
  
He just wasn’t used to having a demi-spouse to help him carry the burden yet.  
  
He avoided Harry’s eyes as he turned and picked up the parchment he’d written the names on. He had the idea they might be all too knowing, and while that would help at times, there were other times when he didn’t really want to put up with it.  
  
“This is the list I came up with,” he said, briskly, and held it out so Harry could take it from him. “Private Healers would be best. Healers in St. Mungo’s may still have ties to the Wizengamot that tried us, or they may think it’s an outrage that you were taken into the family, and I don’t want to inflict either kind on her…”  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned back and sighed. He had gone through four names on the list so far, and still not found one Healer who would agree to treat Narcissa.  
  
Oh, they all prefaced their refusals with apologies and sad headshakes and murmurs about the complications of the case. Harry thought that it  _was_ complicated, and he would have respected a Healer who didn’t want to take it on for fear of making fifty years of sudden age worse. But all of them let their gazes flicker up to the scar on his forehead first, and their wide eyes and jerky movements when they noticed the way it had changed told him what the real problem was.  
  
 _No one wants to serve the Malfoys,_ Harry thought, and rubbed his forehead. The new scar didn’t itch the way the old one had sometimes when Voldemort was about. It felt weird, though, the outline of a coiled tail and an arched neck. He still hadn’t looked at it in the mirror. He supposed he should sometime.  _I wouldn’t have felt sorry for them a few years ago, but this time, it’s really my fault._  
  
He reached for the list with one hand, to try the fifth name, and for the Floo powder with the other hand. Then he jumped as the table jolted with the huge pile of books that had just been dumped on it. He turned to look up at Draco, blinking.  
  
Draco nodded to him, or perhaps nodded to the extensive mini-library of tomes he’d just handed Harry, Harry didn’t know which. “That’s the first installment of your homework,” he said, stepping back. “I wasn’t sure how many books you could read at a time, so I just brought them all. You can work your way through them slowly.” He glanced at Harry, his eyes seeming to see too much, from the scar on Harry’s forehead to the scar on his ribs that a Lethifold had left. “Just do it steadily.”  
  
Harry studied the spines of the books, or at least the ones turned towards him. They all seemed to have worn leather covers, or wrinkled ones that were probably other kinds of skin.  _Pure-Blood Traditions, The Pride of Our Heritage, Manners Make the Man, The Lamb and the Tiger…_ and near the bottom was  _Hogwarts, A History._  
  
Harry gave a thin smile.  _Well, Hermione ought to be pleased that I’m reading that at last,_ he thought, and shifted the rest out of the way to pick it up. There were small interesting parts in this book, he knew, from the many she had recited at them. “What’s most important for me to learn?” he asked, and squinted at the tiny script on the page the book had opened to.  
  
“Manners,” Draco said. “Pure-blood attitudes. Family trees. The way to dress. The reasons behind the most recent wars with the Dark Lords. The—”  
  
“Everything, in other words,” Harry said, and Summoned the ink and parchment to start taking notes. “All right, I’ll look for that.”  
  
“Manners first,” Draco said, so emphatically that Harry paused and looked up at him. “We have a party tomorrow, to introduce you to the world as Harry Malfoy.”  
  
Harry hissed, and only remembered after he’d done it that Draco had been in the Manor with a Parseltongue-speaking Dark Lord for a year. He offered a little shrug in apology, and then said, “Can’t we wait a bit? I’ll only embarrass you.”  
  
“Better we make an announcement this way than leave it up to other people to find out,” Draco said firmly. He held Harry’s eyes. “And I don’t think you’ll embarrass me, or yourself, or the family.  _If_ you study.”  
  
And then he walked away, probably to continue practicing spells with the basilisk wand, to get it accustomed to him. Harry looked back and forth between the pile of books in front of him to the parchment with the list of Healers’ names.  
  
Then he shrugged. The party was tomorrow night, but Narcissa needed a Healer more than Harry needed pure-blood manners.  
  
He put down  _Hogwarts, A History,_ and threw the Floo powder into the fire again, this time casting a quick spell so that his fringe pushed forwards and clung above his changed scar. That might gain him more traction, or at least a chance to explain the situation first and have the Healer judge him later.  
  
*  
  
Draco closed his eyes. He had thoroughly mastered  _Lumos_ and  _Wingardium Leviosa_ , and he had Ossy to let him out if he messed up this time. The locked door in front of him—the library door—wasn’t frightening. He only needed to call up the wand motion he had done so many times it was embedded in the bones of his wrist, the incantation that was already lingering on his tongue, and the will to cast the spell.  
  
“ _Alohomora._ ”  
  
The spell spread out in front of him and attacked the lock. Draco shuddered. He couldn’t remember feeling that reaction from the magic so  _viscerally_ before. Normally, the magic would simply go and do what it was supposed to do, without feeding back through the wand to touch Draco’s magical core.  
  
The door clicked. Draco opened his eyes and stared at the small opening, and then down at the wand in his hand.  
  
A wizard could use his own, chosen wand best, followed by a wand he had conquered. Even a broken wand could be recovered from, at least if it happened while the wizard was still relatively young. Draco had heard the rumors that Harry’s wand had been broken during the war, and that he had repaired it with the Deathstick. Late, but still late enough for Harry to recover his magic instead of having to enter years of training again.  
  
But someone Draco’s age, who had bonded with one particular wand for so long and was out of school, out of the regular habit of practicing spells over and over again, with his core formed and settled…  
  
That took longer.  
  
Draco smoothed his hand along the wood and then turned and thrust the wand into its holster on his belt. For the moment, he would accept the gift of power instead of focusing on how awkward it might become in the future. He had three spells. He would find another first-year one and practice it. The party would be less awkward than it would have been, because he could have Ossy at hand to bring him what he otherwise would have Summoned. And the house-elf would be glad to fill in for whatever other duties Draco couldn’t perform for the moment. He knew  _that_.  
  
He simply wished, with all his heart, that this hadn’t happened, that he had his father back at his side, his mother young and strong as she had been five days ago, the hawthorn wand smooth and familiar in his hand.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry is being scandalously not-dressed yet.”  
  
Harry started and looked up. The words of  _The Pride of Our Heritage_ swam in front of his eyes, blocking his view of the house-elf’s face. Something about forks in the right place and how one always entered the room after any great dueling champion had already taken his seat.  
  
 _Well, I don’t think Draco has invited Flitwick to his party, and Snape is dead, so we should be okay._  
  
“Oh, right, I’m not,” he said, and stood up, shaking his head when Ossy began to circle him with measuring tapes. “Isn’t it a little late for that? I’ll just need to wear the dress robes that I brought with me.” Well, “brought with him” was a bit too strong a term. Hermione had sent owls flying with packages to him when it became clear that leaving Malfoy Manor before the party would be a bad idea. There had also been a Howler that had spent a lot of time telling Harry, in detail, how angry his friends were with him for not contacting them immediately after the demi-marriage to tell them he was all right. Harry shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. Getting a Healer for Narcissa was more important, and he had finally accomplished that at the eleventh name down the list.  
  
“Master Harry is being scandalously  _inattentive_ ,” Ossy said, in a tone that made Harry suspect there was no worse word in his vocabulary, and snapped his fingers again. The measuring tapes vanished. Ossy spent some more time gesturing, and a bolt of dark cloth unrolled and spun into being before him as though he had conjured it from thin air. Maybe he had, Harry conceded, studying him warily. It was probably a bad idea to underestimate a Malfoy house-elf.   
  
Ossy spent some time twitching his fingers and muttering to himself, and the cloth tore itself into pieces. Needle and thread waltzed with it, and Harry thought he saw the edges of sleeves emerging, and the hem of a robe, and the dance of a dragging curve that had better be a hood and not a train like some  _witches_ had on their formal robes. Harry crossed his arms and scowled as the color of the cloth became apparent. It was deep royal blue, a shade he knew from experience made his face and eyes look stupid.  
  
“Look,” he began, “Ossy, I won’t look good in that—”  
  
His voice withered on his tongue as Ossy glared at him. He coughed and looked away, his face burning hot enough he could have fried eggs on it. “Fine, forget I said anything,” he muttered, and winced when Ossy closed a careful hand around his arm.  
  
“Ossy is never making the family,” Ossy said, and took a deep breath, apparently mustering up deep reserves of courage to say this one thing, “ _stupid_. Ossy would never. Ossy will  _never_. And Master Harry will  _never_.” His fingers dug in, and Harry decided that they wouldn’t find him dead stabbed with knives through his eyeballs and his mouth stuffed full of cake, they would find him cinched in half with a belt.  
  
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, and brushed at his fringe. Ossy eyed his hair for a moment, and clapped his hands. Harry started as what felt like a brisk, warm  _Aguamenti_  combined with a Breeze Charm and a Refreshing Charm swept across his hair, flattening it and wetting it and softening it further.  
  
“Master Harry is not saying—that word,” Ossy murmured. “Master Harry is saying ‘all right’ if he  _must_ be talking. And Master Harry’s robes is being done right now.” He clapped his hands again, and the robes whirled up and into being before Harry.  
  
Harry had to admit they looked good, handsome, with the cloth shimmering so richly that he couldn’t help but want to reach out and touch it. The point was, they wouldn’t look good on  _him_. He shook his head and tried to think of a way to explain that to Ossy, but the elf clapped his hands again and Harry was naked.  
  
Absurdly, Harry’s first impulse was to grab at his groin. Draco had seen him naked and he’d got used to it, and Ossy would probably be a lot less interested in what he had, but  _still_. “Ossy!” he yelped.  
  
“Prudishness is not being here,” Ossy said, and stitched his fingers through the air, seemingly making a few last-minute adjustments to the robes. Then he waved again, and the robes, and a pair of assorted pants Harry hadn’t realized were hovering next to them, fastened themselves to Harry. Ossy studied him, and sniffed, and snapped his fingers. A half-cloak dangling down Harry’s back joined the robes a moment later.  
  
Harry shifted from side to side, and tried not to think about how ridiculous he probably looked in this outfit. The point wasn't how ridiculous he looked, was it? The point was that he would go down to the dinner party and make a good impression on Malfoy's guests.   
  
And he should probably start thinking of Malfoy as Draco and those guests as his, while he was at it.  
  
He started to turn away, and Ossy stepped in front of him. Harry started. He had never met a house-elf with such a commanding manner. Kreacher should have taken lessons, and then he and not Mrs. Black would have ruled Grimmauld Place.  
  
"Master Harry will be wanting to see himself," Ossy said, and at least Harry was prepared this time for the implication that the elf was the master and not him.  
  
"If you say so," he muttered, and stepped back as Ossy waved his hand and conjured up a mirror probably worth twice what most of the furniture in Harry's old flat was, given the heavy wood the frame was made of and the way the surface shimmered, like water lit from within.  
  
It was really the first time Harry had seen himself since the first ceremony where the scar wad changed. Sure, he should have looked before this, but he had been drowning in books and worries and formal words. He personally thought he had done well to struggle along as far as he had.  
  
He had thought he might look like many different people in the mirror: a child playing dress-up with his father's clothes, a toy doll, the Auror out of water. He hadn't expected another, entirely new person there.  
  
The man staring back at him was proud and stern, his head half-bowed as though he expected to begin a duel every second. The blue robes looked better on him than Harry would have expected, bringing out colors in his face and eyes that he hadn't even realized he had. Maybe this shade of blue was the right color for him after all, though if it was, Harry didn't know why he had never seen it before.  
  
The lightning bolt scar had been silly enough; Harry hadn't relished seeing what he would look like with a dragon on his forehead. But it was--all right. The dragon was mostly done in light silhouette, rough outline, without a lot of detail on the face or horns, and curved outlines suggesting the spine, the neck, the blurred motion of raised wings. It didn't make him look any less dangerous, Harry was glad to see.  
  
It was all right, maybe. If he could remember the manners that Draco had said he should learn and how to act. It was going to be all right.  
  
“Master Harry is not acting ridiculously so,” Ossy said, and dismissed the mirror with a snap of his fingers. His voice had grown sharp, but not cold. He studied Harry in his blue robes for a few more minutes, and then nodded. “Master Harry will be doing.”  
  
“Doing what?” Harry asked, before he remembered the way that house-elves spoke. He would do, Ossy meant.   
  
Perhaps even for the proud and ambitious Malfoy family, or the pure-bloods he was about to meet.  
  
He sighed, and made his way to the top of the stairs, where Draco was waiting. They would make their grand entrance together, passing down those stairs, Harry imagined, like two ships under full sail.  
  
 _If it works, it works._  
  
*  
  
Two hours into the evening, and Draco was watching the bright shards of his plan on the floor, like shattered glass.   
  
Harry was polite enough. He made conversation with everyone who came up to him, and sipped the wine instead of gulping it. He had used the correct forks and knives at dinner, which was the area where Draco had expected him to flub the worst. Of course, he had deliberately ordered Ossy to prepare the simplest dishes tonight, which probably had something to do with it. But still, more grace there than expected.  
  
But Harry was no good at the most vital art of all, the one Draco realized now he should have required him to study: controlling his eyes.  
  
He would listen to someone talk about the Ministry or blood politics or the amount of money and time spent on Hogwarts, and nod, and murmur agreement, and look inquiring when they paused. But those eyes flared, or flamed, or turned aside, and he used his drink too much as a barrier. The pure-bloods, old money and new money and the people Draco had seen rise in the past few years as the formerly powerful families declined due to their association with the Dark Lord, could tell he despised them.  
  
And so more and more eddies bent away from Harry, and the conversation chilled like some of the wine in Draco’s ears.  
  
Draco stepped towards Harry and put a hand on his arm. Harry nodded to him, and went back to listening to Matilda Moonspirit, whose eyes were bent away from Harry as she spoke, on his hand. The hand that was clenched around the stem of his wineglass, and could be scored by it if it broke.  
  
“Harry,” Draco said, and smiled at the way Moonspirit started and her eyes came back up. That was something, anyway, a small triumph to counter the way the evening had flowed so far. “I need to speak with you.” He bowed to Moonspirit. “Will you excuse us for a moment?”  
  
Moonspirit nodded and murmured something about “young love” that withered like the smile on her face when Harry gave her a death glare. Draco tugged Harry firmly along to a corner and gestured for Harry to set up a ward. Harry did, but this time Draco was the one who got the glare.  
  
“You have to control yourself better,” Draco muttered to him, trying to make it look like his lips were moving in sweet nothings rather than the angry words.  
  
“I have been,” Harry said, and his power snapped around him, attractive and intoxicating and dangerous. “I haven’t hexed anyone yet, have I?”  
  
“Not just that,” Draco said. “The eyes. The face. You have to look as though you appreciate what they’re saying, or you have to look regally bored. Either will do. Not the mask that you wear now.”  
  
“What mask?” Harry asked, tilting his head to the side. “These are my honest feelings.”  
  
“I know, and that’s the problem.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes as though exhausted. “The Ministry tried to teach me the lesson of being polite at parties,” he said. “It never took, either. They learned to let me appear when they needed me as a hero, and not otherwise.” He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “This isn’t going to work, Draco.”  
  
“Too bad that you can’t give up, because we’re demi-married now,” Draco said. “Too  _bad._ You can’t shrink backwards.”  
  
“I can’t learn that—”  
  
“Then you can do something else,” Draco interrupted him. “Some other diversion to explain why you’ve snapped around looking like a thundercloud all evening.” He held out his hand. “Will you dance with me, Harry Malfoy?”  
  
Harry stared at him, at his hand, and at his arm as if they were three separate beings. “I can’t dance, either,” he said stupidly.  
  
“Then it’s time you  _learned_ ,” Draco said, and tugged Harry towards the middle of the room, shattering the ward, gesturing for Ossy to begin the music. Conversations ceased, and heads turned to track them.  
  
His heart danced with the risk, but with something more, too: with the need to challenge the stubborn  _no_  in Harry’s eyes. And to make Harry challenge him in return.  
  
This was something they both knew how to do, after all.


	11. Passion in the Dance

Harry didn’t see how dancing with Malfoy—Draco—was going to fix the problem that even the Ministry hadn’t managed to cure in him, that he was too open about his emotions and couldn’t look people in the eye without making them jerk back and glare at him, but he didn’t say anything. It was Draco’s idea, and maybe that meant it had more merits than Harry could see right now.  
  
He didn’t know anything about the pure-blood world, he was coming to realize, despite his grasp of table manners. He didn’t know how or why the people talking to him expected him to respond. They wanted interest, but not too much of it. They wanted him to ask questions, but they didn’t want questions that would make them rethink their opinions. They expected him to stand there stiffly and say nothing and smile when they referred to Mudbloods, but they also wanted some kind of reaction.  
  
 _This isn’t the kind of thing you can learn out of a book, this invisible line. Maybe I was foolish even to try._  
  
They arrived in the center of the large room, which Harry thought was a dining room, where Draco had chosen to hold the party. Draco nodded to Ossy, who closed his eyes and held his hands out for a moment. The music that Harry had been hearing distantly in the background came to the foreground, and a lot of the conversations stopped so that eyes could focus on them.  
  
Harry didn’t recognize the music, and looked silently at Draco, wanting to tell him so. Draco’s eyes simply met his and held, his fingers tightening on Harry’s shoulders as though to tell him that pulling back now would be punished with the removal of some skin.  
  
In the end, Harry shrugged and waited for Draco to lead. He didn’t know  _any_ dances, not waltzes or tangos or hops or skips, so it was all one to him.  
  
*  
  
Draco recognized the gleam in Harry’s eyes, and had to bite his tongue to avoid saying something. They were here to dance, not talk.  
  
He began to move in the smooth glide that this particular dance required through the opening steps. He wondered for a moment what would give Harry the biggest problem, the “glide” or the “smooth,” and soon discovered it was both. Harry followed along with him, but passively, trying to let Draco steer him rather than take  _any_ active part and anticipate where their feet would go next. Draco leaned near him during a part in the music when he could do that and hissed into his ear.  
  
“You have to start taking  _some_ part. I refuse to think you can be that bad at dancing.”  
  
Harry’s eyes lit, and a smile worked its way across his face that Draco loved and wished he would keep, even if it was arrogant and seeing it directed at him also made him want to smash glass. “You want to see how I dance?” he asked. “All right.”  
  
And he launched Draco into a tight spin that was the exact wrong step for that moment in the music, leaning back and away from him as though he would break the circling hold of his arms, and then coming back in and pulling Draco tightly to his body, humming. There was mischief and menace in his eyes, and that smile, which was the most pure-blood thing he had done all evening, still on his face.  
  
Draco kept his balance with difficulty, and squeezed his fingers into Harry’s shoulder muscles again, hoping for some sign of pain. But Harry didn’t change his eyes, or his smile. Draco didn’t think he’d blinked so far, either. He was enjoying himself too much.  
  
“Not like that,” Draco hissed. “Can’t you listen to the music, listen to the way that it moves around you, and let your body move in response?”  
  
“I don’t know any dance steps,” Harry said, and gave him a mad smile, the arrogant edge fading and giving Draco reason to mourn its loss, “so no.”  
  
“There are more than a few that you’ve got right so far,” Draco murmured back to him, and tried to forget the watching audience. Of course, in some ways that was impossible; he and Harry were doing this  _for_ them, to convince the watching, judging pure-bloods that there was no way the Malfoy family had lost pride and face and strength, no matter what the circulating rumors said. Draco had to think of Harry as the most important thing, and the dance between them as the second most important. “The lean, for instance, and the glide. But they come at different points in the dance.”  
  
Harry gaped at him. Draco wondered why. Had he really never  _heard_ of those dance steps, even when going through Auror training or reading  _Prophet_ articles about the life of pure-bloods of high fashion?  
  
But then Harry shook his head and said, “You’re being nicer about this than I expected. Nicer than the people who tried to teach me dance steps in the Ministry, anyway.” The clutch he had on Draco softened and became gentle, the way he bent and leaned away from him less an escape than a part of their circling dance. “I think—I think I could learn. Tell me what we have to do for the next part of the dance.”  
  
Draco took a deep breath and made one of the bravest decisions of his life. He held up his hand, and although he could feel a second of freezing disapproval from across the room, Ossy stopped the music. He would always do what Draco said, although not always without protest.  
  
“Watch,” Draco murmured to him, and reached out and laid an arm around Harry’s shoulder, thinking of the way Harry had walked into the Forbidden Forest. “You have to lift your head, and you have to focus on me, and you have to follow where I lead, but you have to also keep in mind where your place is in the circle. This dance is all about circles. First we make several, and then we part except for keeping our hands touching, and make another circle—well, more like a spiral, I suppose—with our hands as the center. And then we come back together and make another circle with our hands on each other’s shoulders. Can you remember all that?”  
  
“I can try,” Harry said, and he smiled, still another kind of smile, the first one of that kind that Draco could remember seeing on his face. He reached out and steadied himself for a moment with his hands on Draco’s shoulders again. “Is this the way that we should stand when we make the first circle?”  
  
Draco shook his head, and did his best to keep his eyes fixed on Harry. He would do a lot for a smile like that. “No. Move back a little, so that you’re standing within the ring of my arms but not touching me except maybe with your hands on my sides.”  
  
The whispers and murmurs surged around him. For a Malfoy to teach his spouse the steps was incredible. To do it so openly, and in front of others, was unheard of.  
  
But Draco would rather be seen teaching, and not having taught before, then relying on supposedly learned behaviors and tripping up over them because there was no way to know if Harry had understood all the steps and manners and other things he was supposed to read about and learn. He had already stained his reputation; he had already showed that he was imperfect and sometimes emotional. He would rather continue in a way that would gain new respect in the end than to try and regain respect that was probably already gone forever.  
  
And the look in Harry’s eyes as the music started again, drowning the voices, and he began to understand what Draco had done for him…  
  
Draco could understand the seduction of someone at your side who appreciated the risks you had taken for them, at least once their appreciation showed up.  
  
*  
  
Harry was trying to find his balance. Not literally, but mentally. He hadn’t thought Draco would do anything tonight but expect him to know all the pure-blood manners and snap at him if they weren’t perfect.  
  
Obviously he wasn’t going to be perfect, and he couldn’t learn everything he needed to know in a day, and there were some things—like being an actual graceful dancer—that Harry was firmly convinced he would never be able to learn. So he had resigned himself to Draco snapping.  
  
But this wasn’t that. He stood within Draco’s arms, and yielded, and followed the pattern he set. Once they had made two circles and it was a little familiar, then Harry found it not so impossible to keep track of both Draco’s steps and his own place in the circle at the same time. No harder than keeping track of both the position of a Snitch and two Bludgers in the middle of a Quidditch game, anyway.  
  
Then they reached the point in the pattern where Draco, from the way he shifted and glanced at Harry, would expect him to touch his hand and then walk apart from him in that spiral-circle he had talked about. Harry nodded reassuringly to him, wondered when  _he_ had started being the one who reassured Draco about things like this rather than the other way around, and stepped back so that only their fingertips were touching.  
  
Draco guided him through the pattern, his eyes burning into Harry all the while. Harry stared back. He could understand that this might be a requirement of the dance, or else that Draco wanted to make sure he didn’t mess up, but he didn’t know what he had done to earn quite  _that_ level of intensity.  
  
 _He wants to make sure you don’t mess up again. Only that._  
  
But if that was all Draco cared about, then Harry thought he wouldn’t have risked stopping the music and guiding him through the steps in the first place. He cared about looking good. He cared about impressing these ridiculous people who thronged into his house and ate his food and made low-voiced remarks they thought Draco didn’t hear. But he also cared that Harry not make an utter fool of himself for Harry’s sake, along with the family’s.  
  
Unless he thought of Harry and the family as a unit…  
  
Harry shook his head. This was one reason he hated coming to parties like this. He would try to figure everything out, from little motions and jokes and raised eyebrows that everyone else already understood, and end up looking more like a fool for the effort than he did for ignoring the delicate webs he breached. So he might as well breach them and refuse to learn anything.  
  
But he’d never had a dance teacher like Draco, patient with him when he stumbled as they came out of the last hand-touching circle and Draco reached for his shoulders. Draco murmured something liquid and uncondemning, and then said, “Look into my eyes as we make these turns. Yes, that’s right. Let your hands rest on my shoulders— _lightly,_ don’t grip as if you were drowning. And we’re going to turn to the left this time.”  
  
They had made all their circles so far to the right, but Harry assumed there was a reason, and he was content to go along without asking. He did what Draco suggested, aware of the way that Draco looked at him all the while, the hot way Draco’s eyes caressed him.  
  
 _And that realization makes no sense, either. Why would Draco look at me like that even if he found me fit? We can’t have sex, or the demi-marriage would be much harder to dissolve._  
  
He blinked as he realized that his feet were moving smoothly across the floor now that he wasn’t thinking about every step he should take, and stumbled. Draco was there again to catch him, to murmur encouragement into his ear, to stroke his back and let his hands wander down towards Harry’s arse.  
  
Harry relaxed as he remembered the reason Draco had probably snatched him into the dance in the first place, though.  _What’s happening is important for other people’s eyes, not ours. We already know how we feel. If Draco can convince them that there’s some great passion between us, though, or that we’re united for other reasons, then it can only help in the future._  
  
He leaned back into Draco, letting his hands slide down from Draco’s shoulders towards his waist, since Draco had done that to him. Draco jumped, though, and gave him a long, slow look that made Harry return his grip to Draco’s shoulders, blinking an apology.  
  
 _I don’t know. Maybe only one partner in the dance is supposed to touch the other one like that._  
  
There was still so much he didn’t know, but as Draco guided him through the last, slow glides, and then pulled away from him and bowed, Harry began to think he could learn it. Which was better than feeling as though he was facing an icy mountain he could never climb, because nothing he did would be good enough.  
  
Draco flicked an eyelash at him, and Harry bowed to him in turn. It was a little like a duel, he thought, and he could see why a bow would be appropriate.  
  
The applause nearly knocked him over.  
  
Harry straightened up and stared at the other guests. Oh, it wasn’t applause like the bellows of approval that Harry would have got from the Weasleys in a similar circumstance, just a polite touching of finger to finger and some cold smiles.  
  
But they needn’t have done it at all, he thought. They weren’t required to approve of someone traipsing around a dance floor looking less than confident; he had thought, in fact, that pure-bloods had that pinched look to their faces by nature, and anything less than perfection wouldn’t get them to relax it.  
  
Draco bowed to their spectators in turn, and Harry echoed him, because why not? He knew from the faint flush in Draco’s cheek that he hadn’t expected this reaction, either.  
  
Well, good. Harry would be more comfortable if they were both drifting around in uncertainty, rather than one of them always being the distant and knowledgeable master, and the other the beginning student.  
  
He didn’t mind as much when the teacher was as good as Draco, though. So there was that.  
  
*  
  
They had rescued the evening.  
  
Draco moved through the crowd, and smiles were fainter than before, but warmer. Someone held out a glass of wine to him even though he could perfectly well have got his own, and Ossy appeared a moment later with a tray looking martyred. The point was that they didn’t _need_ to make the gesture, but they had, and Draco knew from that how much they had appreciated the dance.  
  
He sipped from the wine that lay inside the glass, and murmured thanks, and glanced back at Harry, who was discussing dance steps with a pair of young witches who wanted to give him all sorts of hints about how to better perform the dance Draco had chosen. Draco gave a thin smile. That was a topic Harry was unlikely to go wrong about, given that everyone had seen exactly what level of skill he had.  
  
And had chosen to be impressed by it, instead of disdaining him for it. That had been the reaction Draco had wanted to produce when he made the decision to treat their audience as though it didn’t matter, but not the one he had thought he would get.  
  
It was the contradiction in the pure-blood character, he thought, as he traded a wary set of barbs with Daphne Greengrass, who didn’t know where she stood with him now, having started the evening with subtle insults. They admired effortlessness and poise and neutrality most of the time, with the sparkle of wit on top. But if you could do something in front of them that was daring, take a risk that  _paid off_ , you might find yourself admired. The secondary risk was, always, that you never knew if the first one would pay off.  
  
This time, it had. Spectacularly.  
  
Draco swallowed a bit more of the wine to ease his dry throat, and then turned around when a new conglomeration of voices attracted him. Daphne had moved over to Harry and stood facing him as though she thought she would get him to charge her or break down. Harry merely looked at her over the rim of his wineglass, not closed-off as most of the people around him would be, but without interest.  
  
Draco continued to watch them. This was the kind of thing that could burst apart if he didn’t watch out, and he didn’t want anyone to get hit by the shrapnel. Daphne was quick-witted, and he knew that she would like to see Harry brought down. She had blamed him all throughout their seventh year for not finishing the Dark Lord off quickly enough, and subjecting them to the Carrows’ tortures.  
  
But he thought Harry might surprise her. He sipped his wine again, and waited.  
  
*  
  
“What’s the  _real_ reason that you married Draco?” Greengrass demanded, pressing close.  
  
Harry studied her, and didn’t respond. He didn’t owe her answers; Draco had said, when Harry asked earlier in the evening, that only cousins by blood within the second degree would be owed the answer to a question like that. Greengrass was a third cousin only, and then only by marriage.  
  
He could see, from the way she had her hand curved around the wineglass, that she wanted to throw it at him. And her eyes were narrow, and her lip curled in the way that Ministry flunkies curled their lips when they were about to deride him for his mother’s blood. Well, she could go ahead and do that, if she  _really_ wanted to. It would mean he would never take anything she said seriously again, but perhaps she was willing to give up any pretense of an advantage over him, come to that.  
  
“Did you hear me?” Greengrass smiled at him then, and there was a depth of malevolence behind the smile Harry thought he was meant to find dazzling. It was only boring. “Or are your ears as clumsy as your feet?”  
  
Harry shrugged and sipped at his drink again. Ossy, looking pained, had agreed that Harry could have some butterbeer. Harry thought Ossy was more worried about Harry embarrassing the family if he got pissed than anything else, but, well, they could have different motives for the same act, and it would work out in the end.  
  
“Draco seemed to find them graceful enough for his taste,” he said. “And he’s the one I have to please.”  
  
Greengrass’s fingernails rang against her glass as she continued tapping them. Then she leaned in close and said seriously, “Do you? I’m sorry for you. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have that kind of life.”  
  
Harry laughed. He felt people looking over, and then looking away again. That was all right. Draco would probably say they needed more than one triumph in an evening to hang onto their social position, but Harry thought the applause was enough. They would have the chance to build on it later, in other contexts. “I don’t think you can imagine what it’s like to have my life in  _any_ capacity,” he said, and sipped at his butterbeer again.  
  
Greengrass stepped back from him. Then she seemed to realize that wasn’t a threat, and reached out to caress his wrist. “Does your marriage contract with Draco say anything about fidelity?” she asked.  
  
Harry wanted to snap, because this was one question Draco hadn’t told him how to field. In the end, he decided that he should answer as he would if someone at a Ministry party had asked him the question.  
  
“No,” he said. “I don’t think most pure-blood marriage contracts do, do they?”  
  
Greengrass leaned near him and widened her eyes. They were green, and close to the color of his, but Harry didn’t find that attractive. If anything, it would be like looking into the mirror if he was in the same bed as she was, and remind him of how ridiculous he generally looked. “But yours might. Wouldn’t Draco want all that animal passion in bed with him? They do say muddy blood burns hotter.”  
  
Harry thought of several things he would have liked to do to her. Then he thought of the reaction of the party if he did them, and didn’t do them.  
  
He looked Greengrass up and down until she trembled a little, and then said, “I reckon you’ll never know,” and turned his back.  
  
Greengrass didn’t follow. Perhaps she was sharing gossip with her friends, if she had any here, and that meant she had won the encounter. But Harry thought he was starting to understand how much depended on audience, here, and the things that they thought about you. He kept walking until he reached the far side of the room, where a tall glass window opened its panels to the cool night air outside. He stood there breathing in the coolness until the sweat on his forehead had faded.  
  
He felt a person arrive beside him, and try to press a wineglass into his hand. He turned his head, about to refuse, but it was Draco who stood there when he looked, his eyes as intense as they had been during the dance.  
  
“Well done,” Draco said.  
  
Harry didn’t know whether the compliment was sincere, or whether Draco was acting this way to convince that inevitable audience that they supported and favored each other. He nodded and took the wine, to keep up the pretense either way. Then he smiled, because the words cheered him in spite of himself.  
  
“I reckon you were right, and I’m a better dancer than I thought,” he said, and raised his glass in a small toast to Draco.  
  
Draco waved a hand as though brushing away cobwebs. He continued not to take his eyes from Harry. “You would have figured it out sometime in your life.”  
  
“I’m glad you were the one to teach me,” Harry said, and squeezed Draco’s shoulder.  
  
For a moment, Draco went so stiff that Harry was worried he had committed another faux pas. Then Draco took his wrist in turn, closing his fingers around it and smoothing up and down as though Harry’s arm were some rare artifact made of glass.  
  
“You’re welcome,” he said.


	12. All This News

Harry woke to a sizzling sound that made him reach for his wand.  
  
Then he reminded himself that there should be nothing in the Manor that could harm him. Draco wasn’t practiced with the basilisk wand yet, Narcissa wasn’t casting spells yet, and the house-elves wouldn’t hurt him now that he was part of the family. So he sat up and eyed the wards beyond the window, from which the sound had come, and let himself grope for his glasses before his wand.  
  
An owl was flying persistently alongside the wards, a large bird with a smoking red envelope clutched in its feet. Harry scowled, and then smiled as it swerved close again and the wards lashed out to burn the Howler it carried. For once, he was glad of those ancient Malfoys’ paranoia. He would have been enraged if he’d woken up to the sound of a voice bellowing in his ear.  
  
 _Probably from people angry about the marriage announcement,_ he thought, and yawned, and got up, and went to the bathroom, for a quick shower. He chose cold water, though. He thought he’d need the bracing effect to face what was coming.  
  
By the time he got out of the bathroom, the number of owls beyond the window was five, and since one carried two Howlers, there were actually six messages of outrage. Harry leaned on the bed and watched them as he dressed.  
  
“You needn’t worry. There’s no way the wards will let them pass.”  
  
This time, Harry  _did_ turn with his wand in his hand and a curse on his lips before he remembered, and let his hand fall. Draco looked at him with an expression of cool disinterest before stepping over to the window to examine the owls. The birds chattered harshly at the sight of him, perhaps recognizing the owner of the wards.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said to him, and hastily yanked his trousers up to his waist. He hadn’t minded Draco looking at him naked two days ago, but this wasn’t two days ago. “Is there a newspaper article about it yet?”  
  
Draco was trying for a smile in his eyes if not his mouth when he turned around, but he failed at both. “That vain, to want to see your face on the front page?”  
  
“Of course I am,” Harry said, and put his hand over his heart. “For the first time, I’ll know that the picture they have of me is wrong because it’s just  _wrong,_ and not because they added glamours to it to make me look more dangerous or older than I really am!”  
  
Draco blinked. “What do you mean?”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it and looked at him carefully. No, it seemed Draco really didn’t understand what he meant. “They don’t have a picture of me since I changed,” he said, pointing to the dragon scar on his forehead. “So the photograph would have to be wrong.”  
  
“I don’t understand why they would alter it, is what I was talking about,” Draco said, and rapped a fist against the nearest post of the bed in a way that made Harry jump and want to reach for his wand again, for all the good  _that_ would have done. “You look handsome enough for them, and everyone knows your age. What good would it do?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “It sells papers.”  
  
*  
  
Draco shook his head slowly. He hadn’t thought the  _Prophet_ would bother altering photographs. The lies spread by Rita Skeeter’s quill were vicious enough, and were much harder to prove false. Besides, thousands of different pictures of Harry must exist. They could just pick whichever one looked worst or most heroic, depending on what they were going for.  
  
But there was a reason he had never been interested in magical photography, because it was easier to lie with words, and so his father had taught him. He put the matter aside. “You do know that you should do an interview as soon as possible?”  
  
He could hear the grinding of Harry’s teeth, but the important thing was the nod Harry gave next, and not any little incidental noises that he made along the way. “Does it have to be with Skeeter?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco snapped. “She’s the most prestigious reporter the  _Prophet_ has.”  
  
Harry said, “All right. But I want you there with me, so that I can have someone else making sure she writes down the truth, not whatever her Quick-Quotes Quill suggested she write this time.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “I have other things to do.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Draco did some more staring, but Harry seemed to have passed the point where that could intimidate him. He stared back, and Draco remembered that they functioned best as a team, not a pair of horses silently struggling to pull the wagon in different directions.  
  
He dropped his arms and sighed. “Talking with the Healer you found about my mother. Practicing my spells. I can’t be with you every minute of the day.”  
  
Harry nodded in an accepting way, and said, “I have other things to do, too. I’ll arrange the interview for early this afternoon, and then I’m going to the Burrow. It’s time that I saw what repairs I’ll have to make there.”  
  
Draco blinked again. He had managed to forget about the Weasleys, because none of them had intruded themselves into his life since the demi-marriage. For all he knew, some of the owls swirling uselessly beyond the balcony might have Howlers from them, and that would be all to the good, if they pushed Harry further away from them. A Malfoy shouldn’t be wasting as much time on blood-traitors as Harry would otherwise waste, anyway.  
  
“Remember that I’m the head of the family, and I have control of the money you’d want to spend on repairs,” he said.  
  
Harry half-lowered his head and changed the angle of his body a bit, and just like that, a cloud of threat was brewing in the room with them. Draco held Harry’s eyes and refused to reach for the basilisk wand. They both knew that it wouldn’t do him that much good, anyway.  
  
“I’ll remember that,” Harry whispered. “Oh, I  _will_. I can’t forget.”  
  
“I didn’t mean I wouldn’t give you any money, ever,” Draco snapped, unnerved and starting to think that he should have insisted on a list of what Harry would demand money for right at the start of the demi-marriage. “Just that it would have to be for something more important than fixing the Weasley hovel.”  
  
From the faint, empty smile on Harry’s face, that statement didn’t improve the situation. “I’ll remember that,” he repeated, and then walked towards the door of the room.  
  
“Where are you going to get the money, then?” Draco challenged him. He was picturing Harry giving interviews for money, but that suspicion blew apart as Harry turned and glanced remotely back at him. No, Harry still hated publicity too much. Never mind that he would have to appear in public more often as the new Malfoy spouse and Draco’s heir. “I don’t want to hear that you did something that would be beneath a Malfoy.”  
  
Harry gave an eager little sound that reminded Draco too much of a tiger getting ready to spring on prey. “I had Hermione study the terms of the demi-marriage more carefully than you might have known,” he said. “I gave you the Potter vaults. I didn’t give you my personal one. That has nothing to do with a blending of families, and so it’s not legally required by the terms of the demi-marriage. My personal vault has all my Auror money from the last several years in it. That’s what I’ll be using.”  
  
He left, ghosting out of the corridor like a lion. Draco moved to the window and tapped the glass, changing the angle of it, so that it looked out over the front of the grounds instead of the back. Harry glided out onto them a moment later and then vanished, the anti-Apparition wards tuned to him now, permitting it.  
  
 _That could have gone better._  
  
*  
  
“Harry? You need to stop shaking, mate, or you’re going to knock what’s  _left_ of the Burrow down.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and nodded, moving his wand in a circle so that the pieces of rubble he’d lifted with it would float to a stop instead of continuing to move. Then he sat down on a piece of what had been a tumbled wall and put his head in his hands, breathing slowly and steadily, letting his lungs contract and expand in a way that made sense to him.  
  
Ron put his hand on his shoulder.  
  
Harry turned towards him, but didn’t look up. Ron would probably demand the details of what Draco had said to make him so upset, and Harry didn’t think he would explain them well if he tried.  
  
It was just—  
  
He  _knew_. He  _should_ have known, anyway. They were a team when they were facing pure-bloods or other people Draco saw as a threat to the sanctity and safety of his family. Like the dragon, for example. They were great together in immediately threatening situations.  
  
But none of that changed Draco’s contempt for the Weasleys, the one family Harry had ever had that he’d chosen. He had been stupid to expect that Draco would greet the news he’d chosen to help the Weasleys with happiness.  
  
“I don’t think this demi-marriage is worth it, mate, not if it leaves you feeling like this.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and lifted his head. He  _had_ accomplished things today, he reminded himself. When he’d Apparated away from the Manor this morning, he’d gone to Skeeter and set up the interview with her, then sat there and endured a kind of pre-interview while she smiled and simpered at him and asked all sorts of insinuating questions about marriage beds and the difficulties of filling them. And he hadn’t killed her, and if his replies had been a little bit clipped, Draco couldn’t expect miracles overnight.  
  
“It’s worth it,” he said, looking up at Ron and using the words to teach himself, as well as Ron, what he was  _really_ thinking about this. “If you think about it, it’s been worth it all along. I didn’t enter this demi-marriage for  _love._ Perish the thought,” he added. “You ought to see Draco’s face if I even hint at some kind of attraction.” The way he had moved his hands during the dance, and the way Draco had silently but firmly set him straight again, was the prime example, but he could live without telling Ron about that, and Ron would thank him for not saying anything.  
  
If he ever said anything about it. Which he wouldn’t.  
  
“You entered it to help people,” Ron said, and knelt down in front of Harry. “The same way that you’re here because you want to help people.”  
  
“The cases  _aren’t comparable_ ,” Harry said flatly, and looked around at the destroyed Burrow. Rebuilding it wouldn’t put it back together way it had been, but Molly was insistent. She wanted the same building, as nearly as possible, on the same site, and he couldn’t blame her. The connection to the past was important to her, had been even more important since the war. “I would have chosen to help you no matter what, and did what I did because I wanted to. I married Malfoy because it would give me a few things I wanted, and because it was my duty.”  
  
He hadn’t known the words would cut Ron, that his friend would flinch in front of him as though Harry had stabbed a knife through his body. Harry immediately reached out to him, but Ron shook his head. “I didn’t know you saw it that way,” he whispered. “I would have fought harder if I realized that. It’ll be  _miserable_ if you can’t even get along with him.” He tried to smile. “And you’re not a pure-blood or a Malfoy by birth. There’s no reason that you should have to think of this as your bloody duty.”  
  
“No reason for it, except that I do,” Harry said, and took Ron’s hand. “Yeah, it’s kind of miserable, but I walked into it with my eyes open. Not with my heart engaged, the way it is with you lot. Never, ever the same.”  
  
Ron squeezed back, hard enough that Harry felt as if he would turn Harry’s knuckles to powder, and then stood up. “Well, let’s get moving again,” he said. “You know that Mum promised to have that steak and kidney pie for lunch if we do, and I know I’m not missing that.”  
  
Harry smiled, and climbed back to his feet. This time, using his wand to pick up and shift the rubble was easier.  
  
 _This is the way it is. This is the way that I’ll live from now on. And it has its own rewards, and the demi-marriage itself will only last five years. Then, I’ll be free to go, with only my name remaining the same as it was._  
  
He had endured ten years with the Dursleys, more if you counted the summers. Five years was  _nothing_.  
  
*  
  
“How is she?”  
  
Draco started. He hadn’t heard Harry enter the room, but he supposed he wouldn’t, when he was so occupied with watching his mother’s every breath.   
  
“Healer Bowman was hopeful,” Draco said. “But he did say that if he didn’t manage to reverse the damage soon, then she would probably die.”  
  
There was more silence, enough that Draco thought Harry might have opened the door again and simply gone away. But the next moment, a hand closed on his shoulder, rubbing back and forth as though he was a child who needed soothing. Draco jerked away from it and stood, gesturing to the chair.  
  
“It’s only fair that you have a chance to sit a watch,” he said.  
  
Harry nodded at him and sat down. Draco lingered to stare at him, but Harry didn’t seem surprised or uncertain. He simply leaned forwards, placed his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and watched Narcissa.  
  
 _Of course, he would probably do this kind of thing all the time when he’s conducting an ambush in the Aurors,_ Draco thought, and then frowned. That was another thing they hadn’t talked about, Harry’s career. Draco didn’t need his heir putting himself in danger all the time, and he would try to manage it so Harry would understand why things needed to be this way.   
  
After the argument this morning, though, Draco would as soon leave all touchy subjects between them alone until he was convinced that they were  _necessary_ to talk about.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “Just don’t fall asleep. Healer Bowman says she needs to be watched every moment, and Affy’s tired.”  
  
Harry nodded, but said nothing. Draco left the room, still frowning and wondering why he felt as though Harry  _should_ have answered. It was probably good sense that had kept him quiet, or the desire to avoid another argument as much as Draco wanted to.  
  
He took a long shower—his muscles had tensed up as he listened to Healer Bowman explain about Narcissa’s condition—and then settled down to a sumptuous lunch that Ossy shoved at him. In the end, he couldn’t swallow more than a few bites of the steak, the thick salad, or the slender mint dessert Ossy had saved until the end. His mind was too full of the words that Healer Bowman had entrusted him with.  
  
 _“The magic still lingers in her body._ ”  
  
Draco hadn’t known that. He had thought the problem was a  _lack_ of magic, that Harry had pulled so sharply on her life-force when he raised the spell to fight the Dementor ghosts that it had left her incapable of living the way she had been. A lack of life-force would lead to magical aging and imminent death. It had made sense to him.  
  
But Healer Bowman had explained it was more like a spell, instead, that she could die from curses and she could die from this. Harry had not only taken life-force; he had paid back something very like death force instead. It had fallen on top of his mother like a collapsing house, and of course she had taken damage from it.  
  
 _She’s lucky that she’s not dead._ Healer Bowman had said that, too, though not so bluntly. He had wanted to spare Draco’s feelings.  
  
Nothing could.  
  
Draco put his hands over his eyes and sat like that until Ossy popped up in the dining room and stared at him. Then he roused again to eat, reminding himself that he had a duty to live, whether or not he felt like it, and he needed to be strong to continue the legacy of his family.  
  
“Master Draco.”  
  
Ossy’s voice interrupted him so gently that Draco knew it was bad news. He turned around. “Mistress Narcissa is alive?” he asked, wincing as he heard his voice, like he was speaking in a mausoleum.  _Honestly._ His father had taught him never to be weak in front of anyone, and that included house-elves.  
  
On the other hand, at least house-elves, bound to the family as they were, wouldn’t be able to tell these secrets to anyone else. Draco watched as Ossy shook his head and pointed towards the fireplace. “Mistress Rita Skeeter is  _shrilling_.”  
  
Draco turned around, wondering how he hadn’t heard that, either. Perhaps he should go to a different Healer and have his ears checked. The Malfoys couldn’t afford a deaf leader at the moment, either.  
  
But then he saw the odd way that Skeeter’s face seemed to project from the fireplace, and relaxed a little. She must have opened the Floo call in another room, and Ossy had used his deep bond with the house and the wards to move her to this hearth instead, so he wouldn’t inconvenience his master by making him get up.  
  
“Yes?” Draco asked, reaching for a bit more of the dessert and chewing it casually, as well as swallowing a little of the sweet wine. “Was there something you wished to discuss with me, Madam Skeeter?”  
  
Skeeter’s smile faltered a little. Draco was glad of that. Harry couldn’t have done  _too_ badly in his interview, if Skeeter had hoped to find weaknesses in him instead of simply retelling Harry’s.  
  
She pulled the smile back onto her face by main force a few seconds later, and cooed, “It must be  _wonderful_ for you to have a husband by your side to help you bear the burdens, now that your mother and father are—gone.”  
  
“You’re a little in advance of the news there, Madam Skeeter,” Draco said, and lifted his wineglass. “One of your best points, but likely to cost you this time, at least if you publish it as an article. My mother is still alive, and we have a Healer that we’re hopeful can cure her.” He paused, watching the always-amusing struggle between Skeeter’s chagrin at having got a fact wrong in a way that wouldn’t let her torment someone and her glee at being in possession of a new rumor. Then he added, “But it  _is_ pleasant having a husband, yes.”  
  
“Pleasant in all ways?” Skeeter asked, lowering her voice, and honestly, she made some of Blaise’s innuendos look clean.  
  
Draco gave her a faint, fake smile, so well-crafted that she would never be able to tell the difference. “Ah, that would be telling, and I don’t think that even a tell-all should  _absolutely_ live up to its name, do you?”  
  
Skeeter patted her hair as though Draco had just handed her some compliment, and then cocked her head. “I think you ought to know that your influence is already evident. He’s cleaned up nicely. Managed to be  _civil,_ which I don’t think is something he’d ever learned.” She sniffed. “And  _lovely_ manners.”  
  
Draco nodded. “Good.” Harry was acting like a pure-blood should in public, then. He must have shared a meal with Skeeter, and Draco hadn’t had to listen to him yell about it. That was all to the good.  
  
One less worry. Harry was doing what he should, doing his duty.  
  
Thus, it made no  _sense_ for the worry in Draco’s belly to sharpen, as though Harry was sneaking around behind his back setting fires and promising Malfoy money to fix them. He had done nothing so far to disgrace the Malfoy name.  
  
 _Yet. It’s early days._  
  
After a few more meaningless insults traded back and forth with Skeeter, she realized that he wouldn’t give her anything else and wouldn’t respond to her hints about Harry, and shut down the Floo call with a farewell that he could have taken exception to if he wanted to. Draco didn’t. He hesitated, then stood up and walked back towards his mother’s room. He had to know if Harry was still awake and watching, or if he’d given up and abandoned Narcissa, the way that Draco thought he might have.  
  
But if he went back into the room, he’d probably provoke another argument. He paused with his hand on the knob.  
  
“Ossy,” he said, not loudly. It didn’t matter. Ossy popped up beside him and made a deep bow immediately, peering up at him with intelligent eyes.  
  
“Please go into the room and make sure that Harry is still awake and watching Mistress Narcissa.” He would ordinarily have called him “Master Harry” when he was talking to a house-elf, but even starting to pronounce the words made acid flood his mouth. It would have to be this way.  
  
Ossy bowed and popped out again. Draco stood there with his hand on the knob and studied the faceted crystal of it, the gold edging under the facets, the way that the lights gleaming from the ceiling reflected from it. He got lost enough in the contemplation to almost jump when Ossy appeared again.  
  
“Master Harry is being staring,” Ossy said. “And awake.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows. “Being staring?” He was used to the way house-elves talked, and that didn’t simply mean Harry was staring at Narcissa.  
  
Ossy started to speak, stopped, and then said, “He is watching hers. He is not being moving. He is—still.”  
  
Draco thought about it, then nodded again, deciding that was acceptable. Another tactic that Harry had probably learned in waiting for an ambush. “I’ll be in the study, and then I’m going to bed. Tell Harry he can go to bed and wake Affy in another six hours or so.”  
  
“Ossy is doing that,” Ossy said, and vanished again, probably back to the dining room, to stare disapprovingly at the lunch Draco hadn’t finished. Draco turned down the corridor to his study, his hand resting on the basilisk wand.  
  
He would master that bloody wand if it took him a year. And it would take less than that, because he was a Malfoy.  
  
*  
  
It wasn’t so bad, being here, watching her. In fact, it was the simplest thing Malfoy had asked him to do, and that made it something like a gift for Harry. No possible way to miss  _this_ up. Watch and see if she breathed, and if she didn’t breathe, yell for a house-elf. Perfect.  
  
Harry watched.  
  
Narcissa’s chest moved faintly up and down, but once he had trained himself on what to look for, he always saw it. Her hair stirred by her mouth when she blew her breath out. When he trained his eyes to that, there were other things to look for, like how the strands beside those trembled, too.  
  
Harry watched.  
  
Signs of heart attack were something he knew well; there were numerous curses designed to mimic that, and lots of Dark wizards liked to use them. All he had to do was keep an eye on her color, an eye on her hands, which lay on the green sheets like ivory sculptures, and an eye on the charm throbbing in the air beside him, which beat in time with her heart.  
  
Harry watched.  
  
She was old, and it was because of him. She might die, and it was because of him. There was a Healer who could help her, and that was because of him. The Malfoy vaults would have the money to hire the best care for her that they could, and that was because of him.  
  
Harry watched.


	13. The Meaning of Duty

“Master Harry is coming with me now.”  
  
Harry raised his head, blinking, and for a moment feared that he had fallen asleep watching Narcissa after all. But no, he was still awake, and staring. It was just, he realized as his brain caught up with his eyes, that his view of Narcissa for the last few minutes had included a little house-elf bustling around her and touching the sheets and the pillows back into softness with gentle hands.  
  
Ossy, of course, was the one who stood in front of him with his hands on his hips and his gaze apparently attempting to drill a hole in the scar.  
  
“All right,” Harry said. He felt light-headed and wool-headed at once, as if his brain was packed with dead thoughts. He stood up, a hand on the back of the chair, and turned towards the door of the room.  
  
Ossy appeared in front of him again, and did some more staring. Harry blinked down at him. “What?” he asked. “We agreed that I was coming. Did you somehow want me to stay here and come with you at the same time?” He didn’t know how that would work, but he was used to even more irrational demands from house-elves. Kreacher sometimes tangled himself up in contradictory demands until Harry was glad that he had forbidden Kreacher to even punish himself again.  
  
Ossy leaned back and tapped his foot on the floor. Then he snapped his fingers.  
  
The chair twisted. Harry nearly fell, but then he realized that the chair had scooped him up by the arse and was floating behind Ossy, out the door and down the corridor towards his rooms. The door of Narcissa’s room closed with a quiet but definite click.  
  
 _Huh_. Harry swallowed. Well, maybe the Healer had told Draco that there should be only one watcher at a time, and anything more would exhaust Narcissa. Harry wouldn’t try an unlocking charm on the door except in a case of fire, that was certain.   
  
“Master Harry is eating,” Ossy told the air in front of him. He marched along down the corridor, leading Harry and the chair, although Harry would have thought that was too far beneath him. “Master Harry is having a shower. Master Harry is going to bed.”  
  
“Master Harry is apparently sitting down right now and not doing any of them,” Harry pointed out.  
  
Ossy spun around on one foot, in a complete circle, the better to give him a vicious glare on the way and then keep going. Harry blinked. Whatever he had done, it must be some kind of sin against Malfoy propriety.  
  
 _But I only did what Draco asked me to do, sat and watched._  
  
Harry thought some more about that, and then gave it up as they floated into his bedroom and Ossy sent the door banging back against the wall with a single careless gesture. If the sin was small enough for him not to notice, with all the new rules banging and burning in his head, then he wouldn’t be able to think of it now, either.  
  
Ossy hesitated for a moment between the tray of food on the table and the shower. Then he landed the chair in front of the table and shoved the food at Harry, hard enough that Harry had to catch the sides of the table before the tray toppled over in his lap. Harry blinked at him, then down at the food. A thick slice of cake topped with chocolate, a piece of meat that he didn’t recognize with a single glance but which was at least red and steaming, and a salad that looked like a jungle seen from the air.  
  
“Master Harry,” Ossy said, his voice breathy with passion. “Is  _eating_.”  
  
The thought of  _any_ house-elf going breathy with passion was so repugnant that Harry picked up the fork in front of him and started eating so he wouldn’t have to hear any more of it. Once he got started, it was easy to go on. Crisp and sweet and bland and sour and rich blended in his mouth until it was hard to distinguish them from one another. Then again, he probably didn’t need to, when what mattered was the  _pleasure_ that he got out of it. He swallowed and chewed and swallowed and chewed, and lost himself in a comfortable haze of knowing that he didn’t have to do anything else right now.  
  
Before the end of the meal, though, those doubts were creeping back. George was out of hospital now, had been for two days, and Harry hadn’t seen him yet. Frankly, he was afraid to. He had cost George the most physically of anyone except Narcissa, and telling him that he had caused the collapse because—  
  
“Master Harry.  _Is taking a shower._ ”  
  
Harry blinked and realized that Ossy was pulling him again, and also speaking in that breathy way again. He stood up and stumbled into the bathroom as soon as the chair was close enough. No, he wanted to stay far away from all house-eves who talked like that.  
  
He managed to wash himself, although he still felt strange and languid. And crowded, with all the thoughts of the duties he had crowding up on top of one another. Learning more about pure-blood history, and watching Narcissa, and surely other interviews with Skeeter, and Draco had said something earlier about how he wanted Harry to escort him to the gathering at the Ministry to honor the end of the war with the Dementor ghosts…  
  
But he did manage, sometimes, to concentrate on the way the sponge and the soap were moving over his body as simple actions and pleasures in and of themselves, and then he was out of the shower, and done. He looked around for a towel.  
  
Three enormous ones appeared in front of him, and then a set of pyjamas that looked as if they were made of sapphire-colored silk, but also looked soft and comfortable. Harry put them on, wishing that he could trust Kreacher to do the clothes shopping and not come back with “traditional” black robes that looked as if a vampire should be wearing them to mourn the death of his pet bat. Ossy had taste.  
  
“Master Harry is sleeping now.”  
  
At least Ossy sounded normal again, Harry thought, as he stumbled out to the bed and lay down, pulling the covers up over him. He wouldn’t want Draco asking him why his house-elf was stuck speaking in  _that_ kind of voice.  
  
It felt so good to lie down, to let his head fall on the pillows, to feel his eyes shut. At least he knew he would deal with sins and violations of propriety in the morning.  
  
 _And Ossy will probably wake me up early to deal with them, too._  
  
But that thought didn’t have the chance to linger in his mind and make much of an impression before he slid down into unrelenting sleep.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned back from the breakfast table and frowned up the stairs. He had assumed Harry would join him. Surely he had been reading about the importance of punctuality in the books that Draco had given him?  
  
Well. Perhaps he hadn’t had much time to read yesterday, after giving the interview and rebuilding Weasley’s house and then watching Narcissa.   
  
Draco would ask him to take another turn today. He trusted Affy, but the most devoted elf needed to rest sometimes, and Draco would have other things to do.  
  
He opened the newspaper, and smiled grimly at the picture of Harry on the front page. His smile was false, a little, but only someone who had been at school with him and remembered  _exactly_ the way he used to smile at his friends would notice. And Draco was confident that Harry’s friends wanted his marriage to succeed enough that they wouldn’t be giving any of their memories to the papers.  
  
The headline said,  ** _BECOMING HARRY…MALFOY?_**  
  
Draco shook his head as he read the article. Skeeter thought she was so clever, and sometimes she was, such as when she’d become a beetle Animagus, but there were other times when Draco wondered how she could really think so. The questions were exactly the ones Draco had expected she would ask—about Harry’s magic and vaults and the duties of joining the Malfoy family—and Draco wasn’t even a reporter.  
  
The answers were also exactly the ones Draco had expected Harry would give, although one or two of them made him narrow his eyes. Skeeter asked him if he had ever expected to become a Malfoy, and Harry said it had been a complete surprise, which was true, and well enough.  
  
But then Skeeter asked  _why_  he had agreed to marry Draco, and Harry’s answer sounded as though he was restraining the temptation to laugh.  
  
“ _Because it was my duty, of course,” the new Mr. Malfoy says, after a moment in which his eyes focus on me as though he think I might not know the word. “Because it was the least I could do after costing him so much._ ”  
  
Draco frowned as he folded up the paper. That would be a fine answer if it was  _true_. But one did one’s duty without passion and without regret, and he doubted that Harry was capable of that in any way. Instead, he would do his duty with guilt chaining him to the Malfoy family, and there were also the selfish reasons he had agreed to take Draco’s name, like the privacy the wards could give him.  
  
 _Maybe I should remind him what duty means._  
  
*  
  
Harry spent a little time staring into the mirror before he went downstairs to eat breakfast with Draco. Not because he really cared about what he looked like—and the dragon scar wasn’t so bad, even if it probably would lead to people making jokes about the fierceness of his temper—but because he didn’t, and looking at something he didn’t care about was one way for him to center himself, to think, to decide what he wanted to do.  
  
So he considered the face Draco would see, and the mouth he would hear speak, and decided what kinds of thoughts he wanted to fill his head with.  
  
He had been upset with Draco yesterday for what he said about the Weasleys, but he shouldn’t have been. He had married Draco  _knowing_ that Draco’s attitudes hadn’t changed, and Draco hadn’t even considered it noteworthy that the vows would require Harry to put his new family before his friends. Maybe Draco could have changed a few words to be more diplomatic, but it would always be the same underneath.  
  
That was all right. Harry didn’t need to spend all his time in the Manor, and in fact, he intended to spend a lot of it outside, with his friends in hospital and at home. He would rebuild. He would become an active Auror again, as the uproar around the Dementor ghosts died down. He would probably be on his own more than he had been, because some people would avoid him now that he had changed his name, but it would work out.  
  
When he was here, he could be as calm and dutiful about what Draco needed him to do as Draco needed him to be. Read the books. Watch Narcissa. Answer questions. Watch pure-blood behavior and learn how to imitate it.  
  
Really, he was always at his best when he was  _doing_ something. He had certainly learned that during the Horcrux hunt, when the enforced inactivity of hiding from Voldemort had distressed him far more than being captured by the Snatchers and dragged to Malfoy Manor. Give him something to do, and he at least had a goal to work towards.  
  
He stepped back from the mirror, and nodded. Easy enough to do his duty to the family and his pleasure outside it. He’d compared this situation to the Dursleys yesterday, but that was silly. When he was with  _them_ , he’d had no way to escape except inside his own head. Here, there were plenty of ways to do that.  
  
Harry turned and marched down the stairs to breakfast.  
  
*  
  
“Why did you tell Skeeter that it was your duty to marry me?”  
  
Harry had taken a big swallow of tea immediately before Draco said that, but he bit his lip and simply looked him soberly in the eye instead of spitting it out. Draco stared at him.  _He looks like he was anticipating the question, but that’s impossible._  
  
“It’s true,” Harry said, patting his lips with a napkin and laying the cup down. Draco was pleased to see that he was making an effort not to eat like a wild boar at the table even when there were only the two of them. That would eventually pay off in the public atmosphere of parties. “Should I have said something else? I thought it was okay, because everyone knows that we didn’t marry each other for love.”  
  
Draco leaned back and crossed his legs. “I didn’t think the word was in your vocabulary, that’s all.”  
  
Harry’s eyes changed. Draco didn’t know what kind of name to put to the look that filled them, but he knew he didn’t like it.  
  
“Oh, believe me, from the first time I stepped into the wizarding world I knew what my  _duty_  was,” Harry said, in a voice on the edge of a snarl. “Hard not to, with so many people staring at my forehead in hope.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I don’t mean your duty to defeat the Dark Lord. You could have chosen to do that or not, and it would be all one to me.” Harry’s smile took on a nasty sheen, but he said nothing. “I mean your duty to a family. How can you know that, when you had to grow up without your parents?”  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he nodded. “I can see why you’d be suspicious,” he said. “So. What do  _you_  think it means? The books tell me what pure-bloods in general think, but not what you do,” he added, neatly cutting off the response about studying more that Draco was about to give him.  
  
Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought Harry would pay enough attention to him to force him to talk about that, but on the other hand, he could hardly refuse now that Harry had asked him directly.  
  
He clasped his hands in front of him and leaned across the table. “Some of the definitions, you’ve already seen, thanks to the demi-marriage ceremony,” he said. “Someone who puts their family first. Someone who understands that his own desires aren’t always important, that he has to yield and do what he can for the sake of others.” For some reason, Harry smiled faintly at that, but didn’t comment, leaving Draco free to go on. “Someone who— _knows,_ deep down in their bones, that they don’t want to be doing anything else.”  
  
“I don’t know about the last,” Harry said, staring at the wall over Draco’s head. “I have a hard time changing my desires. But I’ll do what I can, and I hope you won’t find me a disappointment.” He ate a little more of the scone that Ossy had set on his plate with a significant look Draco hoped to understand later. It wouldn’t do for Harry and his house-elves to start having secrets from Draco. “Would you like me to sit with Narcissa today?”  
  
“Not this morning,” Draco said, standing up. “Affy can take care of her for a few more hours, and you should study.”  
  
Harry nodded, his face reflecting nothing now. Was he already learning to hide his emotions the way a pure-blood should? That would help them enormously in the future, and yet Draco didn’t know if he was pleased.  
  
 _I will have to learn to be, then, if this is his best effort. We all have sacrifices to make._  
  
*  
  
Harry waited until Draco was gone, and then turned and glared at Ossy. “I ate enough,” he whispered.  
  
More scones appeared on his plate in response, with melted butter on them. Harry met Ossy’s eyes, and doubted he would get out of this argument. Or, at best, he would cause some kind of disturbance that would upset Draco. Harry sighed and bit into his scone, fighting not to stiffen his shoulders at Ossy and huff in offense.  
  
Ossy had been standing by his side throughout breakfast, glaring at his plate. Draco hadn’t seemed to notice. Maybe he was used to that kind of protective behavior from house-elves. But Harry had winced every time Ossy shifted back and forth, or seemed to jab one long finger towards his plate.  
  
He understood, now, why Ossy had been so insistent about eating and bathing and sleeping last night. He thought Harry wasn’t taking care of himself.  
  
 _But I am. I just sort of fell into a trance when I was watching Narcissa, and lost track of time._  
  
That couldn’t happen again, Harry decided, because then Ossy would tell Draco, and he would have a problem of a different kind on his hands. He needed to remain focused but alert, watching Narcissa’s breathing and heartbeat every minute. He had learned how to do that in the Aurors, though it was a rarity in the last few years, when they had tended to put him on the more explosive cases.   
  
So he would learn again, that was all. He could  _do_ it. He merely had to make sure that he balanced that with the things he wanted to do for his friends.  
  
He could live up to family duty in the way Draco demanded—and the way Ossy demanded, he thought, eating again when the house-elf’s finger poked him. He had to be strong to be a strong Malfoy, and starving himself or getting so weak he couldn’t stand up, no matter how accidentally, wouldn’t help his family’s reputation.  
  
He would go visit George this afternoon, though, when his watch was done. He had put off the visit long enough, and his duty to his friends was to be courageous and strong and admit he had done something stupid.  
  
Harry managed to eat six of the scones Ossy put in front of him before his stomach rebelled. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Ossy. Ossy leaned in to sniff his plate, as if that would tell him something about Harry’s eating habits that the way Harry acted and moved couldn’t.  
  
Then he stepped back and sniffed at the air in general. “Master Harry can be going,” he said grudgingly. “But he is not to move too far or too fast.”  
  
“I’ll be studying,” Harry said, and shoved his chair back from the table, grateful to escape the interrogation. “I won’t move far or fast at all.”  
  
The black glare Ossy gave him made Harry decide there was probably an interesting story about Lucius somewhere in the past, but he didn’t have time to hear it right now. The books would give him enough foreign information to take in.  
  
*  
  
Draco sat and faced the ledger that lay on the other side of the room. It was the ledger that contained important family records about the distribution of funds in various bank accounts, and Draco wanted it next to him.  
  
But he was  _not_ going to walk across the room and get it.  
  
He swung his wand up. “ _Accio_ ledger,” he whispered, and aimed the basilisk wand directly at the book so that it wouldn’t try to Summon something else, which was only one of the tricks it had tried to play on him.  
  
A shudder traveled up and through the bones of his arm, which had happened before. Draco ignored it this time, bending all his will on getting the wand to surrender to him, the ledge to come to him.  
  
The ledger rose in the air, wobbling, some of the pieces of paper that stuck out of it riffling as if in a high wind. Draco held his breath in triumph.  
  
Then the ledger plummeted towards the floor, and the magic seemed to run out of Draco’s wand as if it was the end of an open tube. He snarled and jerked his wand up again before he thought about it.  
  
The magic caught and held, but in a strange way. This didn’t feel like the smooth pull of the Summoning Charm Draco was used to; it felt like he was spreading a mesh net out beneath the ledger and then pulling it up and shut around the book.  
  
Draco hesitated. Then he made another reckless motion with his hand. He frankly didn’t give a fuck about how he got the book to him. He only knew that working with first-year spells alone didn’t help him anymore, and that he wanted the Summoning Charm perfected in time for the next party he had to attend.  
  
The book trembled once and then shot towards him, so fast Draco barely had time to duck. But the ledger didn’t fly over his head and slam into the wall behind him, the way he had thought it would. Instead, it coasted to a stop in front of him, wobbled again, and then dropped down to land with a  _bang_ on the desk.  
  
Ossy appeared and stared at him, until Draco leaned back and gave him a stern look. “I’m fine, Ossy,” he said.  
  
Ossy rolled his eyes—a privilege that only a long-serving house-elf would have been able to get away with—and then disappeared again. Draco swallowed and looked at the book, then at his wand.  
  
It was strong. Bucking under his control. It would take some getting used to.  
  
But Draco thought he could welcome the power, the same way he could get used to Harry’s power being behind him now. He only had to make it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate challenges to his authority for long. Harry and the wand would both have to back down and make concessions.  
  
Draco sniffed and began looking through the book.  
  
*  
  
Harry squinted down at the book in front of him. Sure, all right, it was called  _The Dust and Ashes of Pure-Bloods,_ so it made sense that it would mostly be about history, and from the perspective of someone who thought everything good about pure-blood society had crumbled ages ago, but did it have to have so many names? Already it had mentioned fifteen new wizards in this paragraph it seemed to expect him to memorize, along with extremely lengthy titles. Harry kept expecting a Malfoy to show up, but none had yet.  
  
He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice the owl in the room until it flapped its wings and hooted. He jumped and looked up, but held his fire when he realized that it was George’s owl. The letter from him looked suspiciously thin, but at least it wouldn’t be a Howler.  
  
The envelope only had a single sheet of thin paper inside it.  
  
 _Come at once._  
  
And that was that. Harry stood up and Apparated, without thought, leaving behind the litter of books and duty.


	14. Conflict at the Heart

Draco smiled a little as the third ledger settled beside him with a small  _thump_. Yes, he had done this, and done it well. He was master of the Summoning Charm again. No house-elves need dance attendance on him at parties so that he could conceal his weakness beneath their skills. That meant he and Harry could attend parties outside Malfoy Manor now.   
  
Like the Ministry function he still hadn’t mentioned to Harry yet.  
  
Draco stood up with a little stretch and went to prepare himself for that battle. By now, Harry ought to be weary from his hours of studying heavy tomes and prepared for any distraction. Draco might need to use some arguments to convince him that the Ministry party was a _good_ distraction, but he would win in the end.  
  
 _Harry has been compliant today. That’s a good thing._  
  
Of course, the compliance also made a worm of discontent squirm in his belly, because he couldn’t help suspecting the compliance. Somehow. It was an ungenerous impulse, and Draco hoped that he was never ungenerous, but…  
  
Harry didn’t understand duty the same way Draco did, even if he was learning to speak the right words. Perhaps Draco should advise his cousin-brother that Harry could say what he wanted in private. It would ease some of the tension that seemed to be gathering between them.  
  
Draco thought along those lines, as generous as he’d ever been and pleased with himself for taking Harry into the family so smoothly, right up until the point when he stepped into the study and found the books abandoned. There was a long claw-mark on the cover of one, which meant an owl had landed there, and a shred of feather. Draco smoothed it out while staring at the piece of paper that must have summoned Harry away.  
  
 _Come at once._  
  
No way to tell which of the Weasels had written it. But Draco had his guesses. Only a few of them had been injured by the explosion of Harry’s ritual to destroy the Dementor ghosts, after all, and it wouldn’t be hard to find them.  
  
Draco smiled. He was still the head of the family, and he didn’t count the Weasels as an audience in the same way that  _others_ would be. Perhaps it was time for Harry to hear what other sorts of words were permitted between demi-spouses in private.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t know if I’ll survive.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and kept his hand tightly clasped in George’s, not knowing what to do, what to say. He had been so sure everything would be all right, that the injuries he’d done to his chosen family were the sort that could be recovered from. Perhaps he’d had to believe that, ever since he saw the broken halves of the hawthorn wand dangling in Draco’s hand. He’d wanted to believe he could focus his energies on the Malfoys and repairing their wards and health and fortune, that George and Andromeda and Molly would be waiting for whatever time he could spare to them when he was done with that.  
  
Now…  
  
Harry turned George’s hand over and stared at it. The twin of another hand that was lost, that had been lost for seven years.  
  
That was what was going to kill George, the Healers in St. Mungo’s had told him. He had already lost a lot of interest in living when Fred died. With Harry’s help and Ron’s and Hermione’s, he’d climbed slowly back towards the sort of plateau where he could at least keep breathing, even if he did nothing else.  
  
But what Harry had drained from him was life- _force_ , the strength that made life seem interesting, that made the struggle to draw breath in and out of his lungs something other than a mere struggle. George had woken up, but he hadn’t recovered the way the Healers had hoped he would, and today they’d told him why.  
  
George gave Harry a tranquil, exhausted smile, so wrong on his face.  
  
“It’s not as big a problem for me as you think it is,” he whispered, and his hand tightened on Harry’s in a way that made some of the ways he’d shaken hands in the past months seem weak. “I know you want me to live, but—well, I haven’t really wanted to, ever since I lost Fred. Part of me knows that that’s wrong and I should want to live, but…” He seemed to lose the thread for a minute, and his gaze shifted beyond Harry’s shoulder. Harry looked with him. George’s eyes were so intense that he really expected to see Fred’s ghost hovering against the wall of Shell Cottage.  
  
Nothing there. Harry swallowed again and turned to George.  
  
“You could live if I hadn’t taken that much magic from you,” he said. “You weren’t talking like this a fortnight ago.”  
  
George paused and thought. Harry clamped down on his fear that it took George that long to remember what he had been like.  
  
“I reckon that’s true,” George said at last, in the kind of tone that indicated he didn’t much care whether it was or not. “But it’s not all that important, Harry, honestly. I would have lived to please you. I’m dying because I have to, but also to please myself. It’s been sort of hard, these last few years, doing things because other people wanted me to. I’m going to enjoy the rest.” He smiled at Harry.  
  
Harry bit his tongue to keep from saying that he had married Malfoy for similar reasons. George didn’t want to hear about that now. He had called Harry here, as he’d explained after Harry walked in the door, to say good-bye.  
  
 _Except that he wouldn’t have to if I hadn’t been so_ stupid.  _The same way that Narcissa wouldn’t be dying if…_  
  
And that made Harry think of something he should have thought about before. Narcissa was dying because he’d taken her life from her and piled a different kind of force on top of her. George hadn’t suffered the magical aging, but he didn’t have enough life-force left to keep his body functioning, either.  
  
They could live if Harry gave them some of his, though. Such a simple bargain.   
  
 _Maybe not for Narcissa. The Healer said other things about her that I’d have to listen to before I knew._  
  
But here was a chance for George, a shining chance, and Harry acted on it before he lost his nerve.  
  
“Would you want to live if you  _could_?” he asked George simply. “If this hadn’t happened?”  
  
George paused again. Harry took the chance to roll his sleeve up and lay his wand against his pulse point. It was part of the preparations he and Ron and Hermione had gone through for the ritual that drove away the Dementor ghosts. Harry had studied that ritual and the way he had to go about it with an intensity that made all his concentration on the Malfoy books seem trivial. He still remembered the words, could recite the positions Ron and Hermione would have taken if they were there.  
  
 _Just as well that they aren’t._ He didn’t think they would approve.   
  
But this was George’s choice, just like dying would have been. He was the one who had to make the decision, because he was the one Harry owed the debt to. A life-debt, yes, but chains that Harry could wear lightly, because he had chosen the Weasleys as his family and chosen to repay this.  
  
Something like joy danced through him when George mumbled, “Sometimes I have dreams about Fred. He’s telling me that it’s not time yet, that I still have a lot to do before I can join him. I have to live for two now, and do all those pranks and make all those things we never got around to.” He frowned and shook his head. “I had one last night. Maybe…I don’t know, Harry.” He looked down at his thin, nearly translucent wrists, and smiled. “But the decision’s been made for me.”  
  
“I don’t think it has,” Harry said, keeping his voice so gentle that George looked at him without suspicion, which was what he wanted. “If you allow me to repay the debt, to give you back what I took from you—”  
  
“You didn’t take Fred from me,” George interrupted, sitting up in the bed, “and if you’re going to go on about  _that,_ then I’m going to think that you’re the one who needs your head examined.”  
  
Harry grinned despite himself. “I know. I didn’t mean I could give you Fred back. I mean that I can give you life-force. I still know the steps from the first part of the ritual, when Ron and Hermione were drawing their own life-force towards me. I ought to be able to make a gift to you.”  
  
George stared at him with his lips parted. Harry nodded when he noticed the flame burning behind George’s eyes. _He does want to live. He just didn’t think there was any way he could, and he was prepared to see the good side in dying._  
  
“You can’t do that,” George whispered. “You saved the world by hurting me—and it’s not like you meant to do it, anyway—”  
  
“I saved the world, but there are some prices that are still too high,” Harry said, and waited with his wand on his wrist, with the whole world spinning sweetly around him. It was like some of the moments in the ritual to get rid of the Dementor ghosts, but this time, he could feel how great the success would be, how much it would mean to him, instead of just the grueling labor of the work.  
  
George closed his eyes. “I think I’m selfish, but Fred doesn’t want me yet, and other people do,” he whispered. “I’m going to say yes.”  
  
Harry nodded. Then he laid his wand down and began to chant the first words of the ritual.  
  
*  
  
Draco swooped down outside Shell Cottage with a bang and a grumble. With the war long past, the locations of most places that wizards lived were a matter of public record, but Draco had still had to do the journey here on a broom, and he’d made the last flight through the high, cold air wondering if it wasn’t preferable to try Apparating and maybe Splinch himself.  
  
 _Why isn’t he at the joke shop?_ he thought as he strode towards the slightly open door of the place.  _That’s where Weasley would have the most comfortable bed._  
  
But maybe not, if the scene that he saw through the open door—and one beyond that, which opened into a bedroom—was any indication. Weasley looked as if he was about to go out, like a candleflame. Harry was bending over him with a look on his face that twisted Draco’s guts. It was so close to the way his face had looked in the memory of the Forbidden Forest, when he was marching to his death.  
  
 _That’s the way he looks at family,_ Draco remembered.  
  
Well, he couldn’t say Harry should look at him and his mum like that right now. It would take time, years of demi-marriage, for Harry to align his emotions with his duties, perhaps.  
  
But then he heard the words Harry was chanting. Veteran of lots of Dark Arts even if he couldn’t currently perform them, he knew what that spell was meant to do. Granted, most of the time it was in reverse, because wizards like the Dark Lord preferred to drain someone else and thus grow stronger, not give something of themselves to a family member—  
  
He shouldered in through the door, watching Weasley’s eyes widen as he regarded Draco, and seized Harry’s arm, ducking the immediate attempt at retaliation as Harry found himself pulled.  
  
“I’m the head of your family,” he snarled into Harry’s pale, upturned face. “And I say you can’t waste your life-force that way.”  
  
Harry looked at him, and then his eyes were as bright as stars.  
  
“ _Waste_ ,” he said. He opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head. His eyes continued their furious burning. “ _Waste_ ,” he said again.  
  
“It would be,” Draco said, and drew Harry to his feet with a grip on his shoulders that he thought probably hurt him. But that was acceptable if it got Harry’s focus off the man lying in the bed, the man who was going to die anyway. “You can’t use it like that without my permission. It’s a resource just like your money, or your blood. It would cause you to die, and I won’t have you dying when we need your strength to survive,” he translated his words into ones that Harry might understand, while Harry did nothing but watch him with bright eyes and a sunken head.  
  
“George,” Harry said, not turning his gaze away from Draco but seeming to have faith that the wreck of a human in the bed would respond anyway, “do you think you could live without my life-force?”  
  
Silence, and a swallow. Draco didn’t bother looking at him. He didn’t think what the man answered would make much difference in the long run. Harry was the one he had to convince.  
  
“No,” Weasley whispered.  
  
“And do you  _want_ to live?” Harry extended his wrist towards the bed as though waving money tauntingly in front of Draco. In fact, Draco thought, tightening his pincer grip on Harry’s shoulders, watching him waste money would probably be easier to bear.   
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You see, then,” Harry said, inclining his head in a single, slow bow, while his shoulders tensed and rippled under Draco’s hands as he prepared to draw away. “It’s not a waste.”  
  
“It is,” Draco hissed, lowering his voice. Weasley might still be able to hear, but Draco wanted at least the pretense that this conversation was unheard, if Harry wouldn’t grant him the reality. “He can’t live without taking  _all_ of it. And that kills you. And that leaves us in the same position as we were before.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Not the same one. You have money, now. The wards. A new wand. Your mother will heal.”  
  
“I don’t want  _you_ to die, either, Harry,” Weasley said. Draco saw movement from the corner of his eye, and knew that Weasley had pushed himself up on his pillow, though he still wasn’t important enough for Draco to look directly at. “You know that, right? You know…I don’t want you to die saving me. You’ve already done more than enough, saving the world twice and all that.”  
  
Harry was silent, his shoulders flexing and his lungs heaving in his chest as though  _he_  was desperate to expel all his air and give up his hold on life. Draco scanned him narrowly, studied the color of his eyes and the way he held his head.   
  
The posture was lower, crouched, as though Harry was preparing to fight him, but otherwise, he looked much as he had in the Forbidden Forest. And that wasn’t only the way he looked at family.  
  
 _It’s the way he looks at death. It doesn’t frighten him. In fact, maybe he was even disappointed that he didn’t get to die confronting the Dark Lord in the pursuit of a high and noble duty._  
  
Draco felt the sluggish horror creeping through him. Harry  _did_ know what duty meant. He had a certain desire to save his friends.  
  
And he would be perfectly willing to die for them.  
  
Draco wanted to shake Harry, hard. But that would break the fragile mood that seemed to settle over the room as the expression on Harry’s face shifted and changed. So he kept silent, hands still tightening. He could always reserve the shaking as an option for later.  
  
*  
  
 _Yeah, that was kind of stupid, using the spell that would have poured all my life-force into the ritual to save George and not left me fit to stand up afterwards. I could have died. George shouldn’t have to see that._  
  
Harry glanced up at Draco, and although he hadn’t wanted him here, well, he was here now.  
  
 _And Draco shouldn’t have to see me die, either._  
  
“I’ll die if I give George all my life-force,” he said. “What if I only give him some? That means he can have some time to recover, and it won’t kill me.” He faced the bed again. Draco’s face was so strange by this point that he couldn’t read it, but it looked as if he was thinking about more than how Harry’s death would weaken the family. Harry didn’t know if he should be flattered by that or not, so he was going to focus on the one person in the room whose expressions he couldn’t doubt. “George?”  
  
George blinked and swallowed. This was hard for him, Harry knew, but he kept himself upright when he would probably rather have collapsed. Harry reached out for him, and then winced as Draco’s grip on his shoulder pulled his arm up short.   
  
“Yes, that might work,” George said.  
  
“And that has half of my ‘resources’ left for you to work with,” Harry told Draco.  
  
Draco still said nothing, but a moment later, he released Harry. Harry sat in the chair next to George’s bed again, and picked up his wrist, absurdly glad that both Bill and Fleur were out today with their children. George had told them Harry was coming over to stay with him, and they hadn’t questioned it.  
  
He opened his mouth to continue the spell, and then rolled his eyes at himself and turned to Draco.  
  
“Do you know the way to change the spell so that it only takes half the life-force instead of the whole thing?” he asked. “I only know the variation we came up with to defeat the Dementor ghosts.”  
  
*  
  
It would have been easy to refuse, perhaps, and make Harry concede to not saving Weasley after all. Draco had to accept that the Weasleys were Harry’s friends, but he didn’t like the thought of a Malfoy being in debt to them. Weasley’s death would solve that problem.  
  
And turn Harry against him forever. Draco pictured living the next five years with his heir silent and furious and hating him, and winced.  
  
“I know one variation,” he said. “You have to go slowly, though, and listen  _carefully_ to the words. A mispronunciation might do something to him that would make what happened to my mother look mild.”  
  
Harry faced him and listened as Draco taught him the words of the spell, his attention so focused that Draco sometimes winced in the face of it. If Harry saw the winces, however, he had obviously decided that it wasn’t his place to ask. He  _listened,_ instead, and absorbed, and Draco found himself wondering how he could make Harry pay attention to his books like this.  
  
 _Work with him?_  
  
No, it would have to be some other solution. Draco already knew everything that the books contained, after all.  
  
Nevertheless, the thought lingered in his mind, as did that hour or so they spent chanting in the cottage, Weasley watching them from the background with fear and hope mixed on his face as intricately as the ingredients of a Draught of Peace. An odd place and time, with an odd shape, but it might give shape to the future.  
  
Finally, Harry could run through the spell on his own without messing up a single word. Draco still made him do it six times before he reluctantly nodded permission.  
  
Harry turned to Weasley’s bed, and his face  _shone_. The glow in his eyes seemed to have come out and infected the whole of his skin, and he took Weasley’s hand and bared his own wrist, laying his wand above his pulse, as though he was going to give Weasley his light along with his life.  
  
Draco stood back and watched. At least he had some sense of the problem now, and what he would need to do. He wanted Harry to look like that, as radiant, when he was talking or thinking about his duty to the Malfoy family.   
  
 _How?_  
  
That was what he didn’t know, yet. But Draco would figure it out, and he would make sure that he knew how to hang onto it when he had it.  
  
Yes, he could make do with a husband and heir who served the family reluctantly, as long as he behaved acceptably in public and learned what he was supposed to and did his part in watching Narcissa. But he would rather have one who understood duty in all its manifestations, and this looked like a Harry who would.  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and let the life-force drain gently, slowly, out of him. He would feel exhausted for a few days, or at least so Draco had told him, but he could recover from that the same way he had from using his magic in the first place to banish the ghosts. And Draco wouldn’t demand anything too strenuous of him.  
  
Meanwhile, George would live.  
  
That was worth nearly any price.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he could see a faint light settling around George’s face and shoulders, and then melting like foxfire, heading into his skin. George shook, and his eyes opened slowly. Harry thought he could see the color in them coming back, as if George was transforming from a doll into a living man.  
  
“Feel better?” Harry asked gently.  
  
George swallowed and nodded again. His hand came down on Harry’s wrist, and gripped it hard enough that Harry winced and thought he’d have a matching bruise there for the ones Draco had left on his shoulders. “You saved my life,” George whispered. “Whatever horrible things you think you did to me when you pulled on me, you paid it back.”  
  
Harry held his hand silently for a few minutes, and murmured nonsense for a few minutes more, while George closed his eyes and sat there, picking up life.  
  
Then Harry heard the  _cracks_ of Apparition outside, and started. That meant Bill and Fleur were back, and he didn’t think he wanted to face them right now. A glance at Draco showed that he didn’t want to, either.  
  
“Yeah, go on, get out of here,” George said, and smiled at Harry. “I’ll explain to them.” He lay back on the pillows and held his hands up in front of his face, turning them back and forth to examine the palms. “I can do anything, now.”  
  
Harry briefly gripped George’s shoulder and took Draco’s arm, Apparating them out past the cottage’s wards, which he could come and go through the same way he could through the Manor’s. Draco pulled away from him the moment they landed outside their front door and turned to him with a slightly chilly face.  
  
“I want you to  _talk_ to me before you do something like that again,” he said.  
  
Harry blinked. Draco’s face at the moment looked startlingly like the face his younger self had worn in the memory Harry had seen: terrified and hating himself for it. Was he thinking about what would have happened if Harry had died? How all the trouble he had gone through so far would have been for nothing?  
  
“Yeah, I will,” Harry said. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”  
  
“ _Start_ thinking,” Draco said, and swept away.  
  
Harry followed him, still silent, and thoughtful for himself whether or not Draco was going to talk to him. He didn’t think Draco was concerned for him the same way that he was for his mum. That was a special relationship, a closer one, and Draco would value her as a person as well as a symbol of his family’s strength.  
  
But Harry was his brother-cousin-husband-son right now, in a weird way, and the only member of the family who could wield a wand with any regularity, the only one who could protect Narcissa if Draco was gone, and one half of the team that had to make them look good in public.  
  
Harry straightened his shoulders.  
  
 _If we’re only good together in threatening situations, then maybe I should just think of us as being under siege all the time. That ought to make it easier to think of doing my duty to them as well as to my friends._  
  
Draco doesn’t like me, but he does have to be careful of me. I should do the same for him.


	15. This Continuing Cycle

“You are  _not_ doing the same thing to my mother.”  
  
Harry blinked and looked up from Narcissa’s bed. He thought he had achieved the balance of watching and alertness that he needed, focused so he could spring to his feet in a minute if something changed, but not bored with the work of it. He had become so focused, in fact, that it took him a minute to remember what Draco was probably talking about.  
  
“What I did with George?” he asked. “Oh. No. I would never try to do that.”  
  
Draco paused, staring at him with narrowed eyes. Harry had to turn his head back so he could observe Narcissa, but he could still feel the storm beside him growing, Draco’s rage deepening and soaring both at once, like a mountain in the process of building.  
  
“Then why,” Draco asked delicately, “did you think that you could try it on the Weasley?”  
  
Harry drove his nails into the palms of his hands. He didn’t think he should get upset. Narcissa needed rest. That meant she didn’t need her son and her son-in-law shouting in her rooms, or for the person who was supposed to watch her to neglect his job.  
  
“Because I thought I could make a gift of my life-force and George would recover,” he said. “With Narcissa, I know it’s more complicated than that. She can’t say yes or no, one way or the other, and the Healer told me it was more complicated because I  _asked_ him. You’re the one who would have had to tell me to do it, and I know you don’t want to. No, there was never a chance I would do it to her.”  
  
Silence. Harry held his breath, waiting for Draco to go, and had to let it out when Draco only stood there.  
  
“Why are you so determined to fight about this?” he hissed out. “Could we at least wait and do it later, when there’s the chance that we won’t wake her up?”  
  
Draco’s storm seemed to freeze, and for a moment Harry thought he would burst out shouting anyway, and ruin all the silence and peace that Harry was trying to preserve. But then Draco simply sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, in a way that made it seem as though he was trying to rub away the lines of pain and the furrows of fury on his forehead.  
  
“We’ll do it later,” he said. “But I want you in the dining room for dinner at precisely six-o’clock. Affy should have had the chance to get some sleep by then.”  
  
He didn’t slam the door on the way out, either, whatever Harry might have thought of him. Harry had to watch the slenderness of Narcissa’s wrist for a little while before he reminded himself that what mattered was how they got along for  _her_ sake. Draco might want to fight with him, and they  _did_ need to talk about Harry almost losing his life, but none of that had anything to do with her. She was someone they needed to protect.  
  
When he thought of it like that, it was simple and obvious, and he could do his duty, however much Draco might think Harry didn’t know anything about duty. He breathed and he focused, and slowly the alertness came back, cautious as a cat that had been shouted at. Harry leaned forwards and watched her pulse beat, and that was helpful.  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to stand up when Harry came into the dining room, but Ossy appeared before he could do that, folded his arms, and glared at Harry.  
  
Draco felt his eyebrows rise, and sat back down, curious as to how the scene would play out if he didn’t intervene. He didn’t know that Ossy had decided to take Harry to task for neglecting Narcissa. Ossy never did the same thing to him, but then, Draco was never the kind to neglect his duty.  
  
Instead, Ossy said, his voice low and charged, “Master Harry was not eating lunch.”  
  
Draco blinked. He’d noticed that Harry hadn’t joined him for that meal, but since Draco had eaten only soup and salad before going upstairs to continue the struggle to master his wand, Harry easily could have eaten elsewhere.  
  
Harry stared at the floor and sighed, but the sight had something of a curse in the back of it, “Sorry, Ossy,” he muttered. “I know I need to keep my strength up. But I’d just got back, and I didn’t want to leave Narcissa.”  
  
Ossy considered that excuse and then nodded, a slow and regal bob of his head that Draco had never seen. “Ossy is accepting this,” he said. “Master Harry is accepting  _this_.” A meal that seemed to consist almost entirely of potatoes—soup and a thick mashed mass of them in the center of the plate—appeared on Harry’s side of the table. “Master Harry will eat this. And second helpings.”  
  
Draco waited for Harry to explode. He certainly would have, if Draco had been the one trying to arrange his life like that.  
  
But Harry only nodded and walked around the table, sitting down in the chair in front of the meal. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks, Ossy.” And as Ossy disappeared with the air of someone who had conquered a stubborn city, Harry grimaced and started working the potatoes down his throat, although they were so thick his fork kept sticking in them.  
  
Draco said the first thing that came into his head. “Why is it that you’ll listen when he scolds you but not when I say it?”  
  
Harry’s head rose, and his eyes flashed once with something that looked like temper, and also deeper than temper. Draco reminded himself that he had homework as important as Harry’s homework in pure-blood history and manners: to learn to read his demi-spouse, so that Harry’s moods would no longer be as dangerous or unexpected to him. “Because he makes it clear that his dislike isn’t personal,” Harry said, and went back to his meal.  
  
Draco stared at him. “What?” he asked at last, when he had examined that statement from every angle he had and found nothing that made sense about it.  
  
“He wants me to stay strong for the sake of the family,” Harry said, rolling some more potato around in his mouth and swallowing it. Draco wondered that he’d consented to eat it when he’d valued the good and sweet food so much before. Maybe he didn’t realize he could have that kind of food for the asking now. “He’s upset when I fail to eat or sleep because that means I can’t perform my duties as effectively.”  
  
Draco blinked, and blinked again. Those had been the kinds of words he’d wanted to hear Harry say. It made no sense for them to sting him like soft lashes across his skin.  
  
“So am I,” he settled for saying at last.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “No, you aren’t. You don’t want me to do certain things because it would waste resources, sure, but you also despise me for not having that sense of duty already. Ossy doesn’t despise me. He’s just exasperated. So I find him more tolerable.”  
  
He went back to eating, and Draco sat there. He was thinking. He was thinking about the words he’d just heard and putting them together with the look on Harry’s face when he’d bent over Weasley’s bed, ready to pour himself forth into that endless well just as he’d been doing all his life.  
  
“You didn’t know,” he said at last, and his voice was full of—numbness, maybe. It couldn’t be wonder, no matter what it sounded like.  
  
“Meaning?” Harry asked, and began to eat his soup, having finished with his potatoes. At least he laid the fork in the right place, Draco thought, glad that he could notice that when his brain was whirring and whizzing the way it was.  
  
“You didn’t know that the spell you performed for Weasley, before I got there, would pull on all your strength and kill you,” he said. “You were—you were  _willing_ to die, but you didn’t mean to.”  
  
Harry gave him a silent, level look. Then he said, “Of course I didn’t think it would kill me. Ron and Hermione performed the same spell when we were fighting, and all it was meant to do was give me their strength. Exhaust them, but not kill them. And I thought it would do the same thing to me. I was thinking that my pulling wouldn’t even have harmed your mum and George that much except that I had a life-debt to your mum and that was a connection, and George was already low in life-force.”  
  
“You didn’t mean to die,” Draco repeated. He didn’t know what to think. He wanted to sit by himself and consider for a while, but he also didn’t want to leave, not while Harry was sitting there. He found that he had leaned forwards, in eagerness to hear what Harry was going to say.  
  
*  
  
The potatoes sat heavily in Harry’s stomach. He resisted the temptation to push away his bowl of soup and walk out of the room, no matter how good and warm the soup tasted in his mouth.  
  
But who cared what the food tasted like, really? Ossy gave it to him because it would keep his strength up, and that was really the only reason it mattered.  
  
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know. When you told me I could die, then I started thinking of other solutions.”  
  
Draco shook his head and looked for a moment as though he was going to get up and walk out of the room. Since Harry had manfully not done the same thing, he stayed sitting, and the moment passed, and Draco whispered, “I thought you were trying to commit suicide, that you didn’t care how you died, as long as your friends got to live.”  
  
Harry winced and frowned at the same time. He could see how that would have irritated Draco. Dealing with a suicidal demi-husband, or whatever he was, would have wasted all the time and effort Draco had put into making the demi-marriage happen. No wonder he had acted as though Harry was deliberately trying to take money away from him or something.   
  
Being seen as a resource wasn’t that bad, now that Harry understood the  _reason._ They didn’t have any good personal history between them. Draco couldn’t say he was concerned about Harry committing suicide the way a friend would have.  
  
“Yeah, sorry,” Harry said, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that.” Draco’s frown became more pronounced, but he didn’t, Harry noticed, deny he had been scared. “I just—I needed to help George, and that was the first way that came to mind.”  
  
“Would you have minded if you had died?” Draco was austere as a judge again, and the brief flash of openness had gone, but at least Harry felt he understood the source of their latest quarrel now.  
  
“I would have,” Harry said quietly, “because it would have prevented me from keeping my word to you, and Ron and Hermione would have been upset. And I reckon that your mum would have suffered some more.”  
  
Draco made a cut-off hand gesture. Harry had no idea what it had been, and he was done with trying to assume, since he always ended up making such a muff of it. He waited, and Draco sighed and said, “But you would have chosen that way to die over others.”  
  
“I would have chosen living more,” Harry said cautiously.  
  
“You wouldn’t  _mind_ ,” Draco said. “If you had to die, you would have given up your life for Weasley.”  
  
“There are worse ways to die,” Harry said, all he could say until he understood exactly what Draco wanted.  
  
But it seemed that Draco might not understand himself, because abruptly he leaned back, and the plates in front of him filled with food. Harry couldn’t help eying the thick piece of chocolate cake on the plate furthest away from Draco’s hand.  
  
Draco caught his gaze, and pushed the cake silently across the table.  
  
Harry hesitated. But it wasn’t as though it would be poisoned, so why not go through with it? He picked up his fork, Vanished the last of the potatoes off it, and began to eat. The chocolate melted and dripped down the tines, and he had to swallow again and again against the sweetness, and he was happy.  
  
“You like the food here, at least,” Draco said, swirling his drink in a glass and watching him. Harry thought the drink was wine, but he had to admit he didn’t recognize the color.  
  
“I do,” Harry said, and savored the last bite of the cake with a length and a slurp that made Draco curl his lip. Harry leaned back in his seat and grinned at him. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do something like that in public.”  
  
Draco went still for a moment, and then reached under the chair, or so it seemed to Harry, and brought out a thick, creamy envelope with the seal standing up in bossed gold. “The Ministry has invited us to a celebration to mark the end of the war with the Dementor ghosts. I hoped you might attend with me.”  
  
Harry locked eyes with Draco. He could have said so many things: that he wouldn’t have gone without this between them, because he found parties where he was the guest of honor unutterably boring; that there was a lot more room to make mistakes when they were outside Malfoy Manor and they didn’t have Ossy to clean up after them; that Draco could have simply demanded that Harry attend with him, instead of asking, and Harry would have had to do it.  
  
But  _because_ they both knew all those things were there and didn’t say them, Harry felt able to reach out, and take the envelope from Draco’s hand, and look over the details of the party. Two nights from now, and at the bottom of the letter glowed a soft, swirling silver oval, waiting for the recipient to press his wand into the middle of it and announce he was coming. Harry touched his wand to it, and the oval stopped sparkling and became a simple circle of grey ink.  _Approved._  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, handing the letter back to Draco. “I think I might still embarrass you, but it’s important that people see us together.”  
  
Draco leaned back and looked at him thoughtfully. “Your manners are better than I thought. Why can’t you keep your emotions concealed?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I never learned. Before I came to Hogwarts, I lived with people who didn’t care what I was feeling one way or the other.” Draco’s brows pinched, but he didn’t say anything, and Harry was grateful. The Dursleys had nothing to do with this, and he knew Draco would probably only despise Muggles more if he heard about them. “When I was there, I just didn’t  _care_. Couldn’t care. I had a Dark Lord after me and people trying to kill me from the time I was eleven. My first priority was surviving, not having a pretty face. Besides.” He gestured at his scar, and then remembered it was changed, but—“The way this used to look, people knew who I was right away anyway, and thought they knew what I was thinking because I was Harry Potter.”  
  
Draco’s eyes had become slits. “Do you think you could learn? It’s going to cripple you among pure-bloods until you do.”  
  
“Why?” Harry asked bluntly. “Not everyone at the party we had was concealing their emotions. Greengrass showed plenty of contempt, and I saw the way other people looked disgusted with me.”  
  
Draco was still for a moment, and then smiled. “Yes, there’s that.”  
  
“You look a lot handsomer when you smile,” Harry said, without thinking, and then wanted to bury his face in the remains of his chocolate cake to hide the blush flaming on his cheeks.  
  
*  
  
“It’s something, to know you think that,” Draco said, and watched as Harry slowly lifted his head and peered at him around the side of his hands.   
  
Had he expected a snapping, a row? Probably. After all, Draco had just finished telling him that he expressed his emotions too freely. Draco reached across the table and let his hand rest near Harry as he thought about how to phrase things, leaving it for Harry to hold if he wanted to.  
  
“You express too much  _spontaneously_ ,” he said at last. “Maybe I should say not that they control what they’re feeling, but they control their faces. Anything they—we—show is calculated. Spontaneity is vulgar.”  
  
“Why?” Harry moved his hand towards Draco’s, as though the gesture meant nothing and he had done it because he wanted to.  
  
Draco controlled his smile with an effort born of long training. “Because,” he said, “spontaneity like that involves  _breaking out_. You could say something with political consequences—or at least you could, when parties like the one we had last night were important to more than our immediate circle, before the Ministry neutered us and made itself the center of wizarding society. You might undo a marriage alliance by showing too openly that you thought your betrothed was ugly. Perhaps a different kind of wizard would just have restricted it to words. But we put the emotions in the same category.”  
  
“Oh,” Harry said, and linked their hands. “Does it matter less for me because of my blood?”  
  
Draco blinked. “You can’t imagine that I  _liked_ the insults they leveled at you?”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Are we talking about you or me? But no, not that. I didn’t think you liked them, just that you agreed with them.”  
  
Draco curled his own lip. “I don’t like them talking about it,” he said shortly. He didn’t want to say what he felt about Harry’s heritage right now, since it would probably come out all complicated. “But no, it’s more important for you, because you have to show them that someone with your mother can control his emotions, too.”  
  
Harry hissed at him, and his hand flexed in Draco’s hold. Luckily, though, he didn’t draw it away. Draco held his stare, and reminded him silently that he was the one who had chosen to raise the topic. If he didn’t like the answers, perhaps he shouldn’t have asked the questions.   
  
*  
  
Harry frowned, and half-closed his eyes. Then he said, “I think I have it, at least for the Ministry celebration. I could practice in front of you or in front of a mirror, but I wouldn’t get as good as I needed to be, even with that.”  
  
Draco didn’t move or squeeze his hand. He just waited.  
  
 _We can get along even we talk,_ Harry marveled, with a faint shake of his head.  _It just takes effort, that’s all._  
  
“This is it,” he said. “I can wear a glamour, one that will disguise the way my eyes light up and the muscles in my face move. I know you can’t cast that glamour right now, but you could give me the instructions for it, or tell me what book to look in, and I think I could manage with that level of instruction.”  
  
Draco’s whole face twitched, as though he was thinking about the kinds of movements the glamour would conceal. “Someone would notice,” he said. “And what excuse would we give for it?”  
  
Harry grinned. “That I’m embarrassed about this silly scar.”  
  
Draco jerked his hand away, or tried to. Harry was waiting for that, and only settled his wrist more firmly against the edge of the table to prevent it. Draco calmed down, but glared at him in silence, waiting for his explanation.  
  
“I think we should convince the others that we  _could_ quarrel,” Harry said quietly. “There’s someone out there who sent the dragon, someone who wishes us harm. If we show that we’re striving to stand together but have a division between us, that I’m ashamed of our marriage or not living up to it properly, someone might come and try to feel me out. That could lead us to know who our enemies are.”  
  
Draco stared at him, and his eyes saw far more than just the scar this time, Harry was certain. Then he half-shook his head and lowered it as though he was going to butt through a wall. “And you said you had no political instincts,” he muttered.  
  
Harry spread the hand Draco wasn’t holding. “It’s hard to explain. I just don’t have any outside certain situations. I can come up with a solution once I know what the problem is. I was good at casting certain spells in Auror training and finding ways around obstacle courses they set up.” Draco gave a little jerk at the mention of Aurors, but Harry didn’t know why, and Draco didn’t offer to explain. Doubtless he would find out later. “But I’m not good at seeing a situation from the outside and coming up with a solution that way. I never would have thought of something like the demi-marriage if you hadn’t suggested it.”  
  
Draco frowned at him. Then he said, “That’s more normal than I thought you were.”  
  
Harry laughed in spite of himself. So many people outside his friends thought he was abnormal, what was one more? “Yeah, it is. I’m not a miracle-worker, Draco, and you’re showing me that I’m even less good at some things I assumed I was competent at. I can do some things well. I need to learn the pure-blood ways. But this might be a good temporary solution for one particular party.”  
  
Draco remained silent for some time, his fingers playing on Harry’s wrist as if it was the tabletop, tapping and drumming and shifting back and forth. Harry remained still, biting his lip. He was pretty sure Draco didn’t realize how distracting that was, and for all the wrong reasons.  
  
 _Pretty_ sure.  
  
Finally Draco said, “Let’s go with it for this party. I’ll fetch the book with the glamour instructions for you.” He stood up and pushed his chair back from the table.  
  
Harry smiled at his back, and offered, “Would you like me to work with you on your spells?”  
  
Draco turned and stared at him with such a glacial mask of astonishment that Harry was certain it had gone wrong after all, and started to withdraw the offer. But Draco shook his head, and there was a faint blaze of wonder in his eyes, and he said, “That would be—acceptable.”  
  
And he left the room, with what looked like a spring in his step. Harry smiled after him.  
  
He didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because Ossy popped up with a thick plate of ham and a determined look in his eye.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned his face on the banister and closed his eyes. The world was spinning around him, dizzy, and he felt as though he wanted to swallow the air in great gulps.  
  
They had talked.  
  
And  _got along._  This wasn’t impossible, after all.  
  
Perhaps it never had been.  
  
 _Perhaps it never will be again, as long as I can remember this evening._


	16. Party Politics

Harry took one more second to adjust his dress robes in front of the mirror that Ossy had conjured for him, and then nodded. It was less than perfect. He still thought the robes, which were green, brought out too  _much_ of the colors in his eyes and made him look as though he’d just been startled by a mouse.  
  
But it was the color that Ossy insisted was right for him, and Harry knew something about politics, as he had showed Draco the other day. That meant he knew when to appease a house-elf and agree that something was perfect.  
  
“Right,” he said, flicking at the lace around the cuffs of his sleeves. At least Ossy had agreed that lace longer than the restrained kind Harry wore right now would probably droop in his wine and get in the way of making a good impression rather than add to it, so Harry could actually see his wrists. “We shouldn’t be long.”  
  
Then he stopped, blinking, as it occurred to him that he was trying to reassure a house-elf like it was his child. He shook his head and met Ossy’s eyes as Ossy lowered the mirror and peered at him.  
  
“Master Harry is being successful,” he said, and Harry knew that Ossy would have turned those words into a prophecy like the one that had made him meet Voldemort if he could.  
  
“Right,” Harry said, and nodded and smiled back at him, and waited until Ossy vanished to do something else before he shut his eyes and shook his head. Merlin, his life had changed in the course of a few strange days.  
  
He adjusted the hang of the lace again, and opened the door. Draco had said that he would meet Harry at the head of the grand staircase, even though they had no one to impress this time by sweeping down it. Affy and Ossy would both watch Narcissa tonight, spelling each other as necessary, and Draco had mastered all the spells he was going to master, with Harry’s help.  
  
And Harry had read all the books that he had time for, and the reminders of manners clashed in his head like cymbals, until he felt as though he should walk gingerly to avoid spilling them all.  
  
Draco gave him a considering look when Harry came up beside him, and Harry did his best not to stare in defiance, to keep his gaze and the tilt of his head relaxed. Draco’s hand trembled as if he wanted to reach out and pluck at Harry’s sleeve, but he pulled his grasp back at the last moment. Looking ahead distantly, he nodded.  
  
“You’ll do.”  
  
“Thank Ossy, not me,” Harry said, and held out his hand so that he could take Draco’s arm for the sweep down the stairs, which he had read in one of the books he was supposed to do. Draco was the head of the family and the one who had welcomed Harry, not the other way around. So he led. It would be the same in the dances at the Ministry party, except Harry had no qualms about being led there, considering his lack of dancing skills.  
  
Draco gaped at him. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What?” he asked. “It’s true that I don’t know much about clothes.” The Ministry had given up on that in despair, too, and learned it was just better to let Hermione dress him.  
  
“But that you don’t  _care_ ,” Draco whispered, and reached out to set his arm in place, as steady as any arm of a couch. “I keep being reminded of how different you are from the people I grew up around.”  
  
“I’ll become like them,” Harry said, walking down the stairs in step with Draco. “As much as I can be.”  
  
Draco only shook his head and said nothing. Harry assumed he was envisioning disastrous outcomes at the party if someone happened to ask Harry about fashion, and said nothing, too, all through the Flooing. At least having a firm grip on Draco’s arm meant he was less likely to fall when he alighted.  
  
*  
  
 _He really doesn’t care about looking nice, or about money. At all._  
  
Draco shook his head slowly as he escorted Harry through the Atrium, up to the lifts and the Ministry Department on the third floor that would have been transformed for this party. Of course he knew that Harry didn’t care about those things. His own surprise disgusted him.  
  
But it still surprised him that Harry didn’t care about developing some sort of  _sensibility_ for it. All right, so he didn’t want to attend the Ministry parties, and couldn’t care less about pure-blood goodwill until Draco had demanded his presence in the demi-marriage. But he could use the knowledge to fit in with the pure-blood criminals he hunted. Did his job not matter to him, either?  
  
Draco’s lips firmed.  
  
Not that being an Auror would be Harry’s job much longer—it was too dangerous for the Malfoy heir to be on the receiving end of curses. But Draco had yet to talk to him about that, either.  
  
He walked Harry briskly off the lift and into the middle of the swirling party, ignoring the people who turned to look at them when their names were announced. It was the people who turned to stare when they passed that mattered, the ones who heard Harry  _Malfoy_ and didn’t immediately connect it with Harry Potter.  
  
The ones who might not have heard the news yet, or who had thought it was a joke.  
  
Draco could see their eyes: stiffening Aurors, pure-blood wizards who had chosen the side of the Ministry rather than their own social circles after the war, high-ranking minions of other Departments. All of them stared in silence, and all of them knew some of the currents that would be set stirring anew, now that Harry Potter walked at Draco’s side and wore a different name. None of them would welcome the jouncing of what had been a familiar and comfortable world as long as they were dealing with the Boy-Who-Lived.  
  
 _You don’t get to deal with him now._ Draco realized there was a pleasure all its own in confounding expectations like this, one he hadn’t been able to afford when he was still a Malfoy in peril dealing with a Ministry that had little reason to tolerate him. But all the reason he could want was walking at his side, utterly oblivious of the way most of the power in this room could rotate around him if he tried.  
  
Then Draco saw the way Harry looked at one of the women who had come simpering up to them to offer congratulations on their wedding, and revised his estimate again.  
  
 _Not oblivious. He truly doesn’t care._  
  
Draco shook his head. Harry should start caring. That carelessness had worked so far because the scar on his forehead and the killing he’d done gave him a power that no one else could touch. Easy enough for the eagle not to care about the land he was flying over when no one had the power to clip his wings.  
  
But the witch trying to babble to them had already seen Harry’s changed scar, and Draco saw both her paling face and her avid stare. She retreated almost at once to a group of women that included Pansy Parkinson’s mother, and began whispering. Draco saw them turn their heads all at once, coordinated like a pride of lionesses hunting.  
  
Harry turned his head and showed his teeth. The glamour they had chosen kept his face from showing more emotion than that, though this close, Draco could see beneath it and make out the tightly-reined disgust.  
  
 _He knows. Sometimes, he knows._  
  
Maybe, then, Draco thought, as he accepted a glass of champagne from one of the circulating servants and nodded pleasantly to Blaise Zabini as he stepped up to them, it was less a matter of teaching Harry new things than teaching him to care. And Draco could learn to do that, could learn what Harry wanted and give it to him.  
  
 _I’m a Malfoy. There’s nothing I can’t have, if I want it. Time to remind Harry of that, too._  
  
*  
  
Harry nodded to the man who had approached them, a handsome black man with bright, inquiring eyes who looked first at Draco, and then at him, as if Harry was unimportant next to Draco. Well, if the man was the boy from Slytherin that Harry half-remembered, that made sense. The man had been friends with Draco in Hogwarts, when Harry was mostly some annoying kid who inconvenienced the Dark Lord every now and then.  
  
“Blaise Zabini,” Draco said, turning to present the man to Harry with his hand on Zabini’s wrist and his other hand resting, still lightly but pressing down harder than it had, on Harry’s arm. Harry nodded. They had discussed signals like this before they came. This particular one meant it was a genuine introduction, and Harry was to behave himself, instead of taunting one of Draco’s political enemies.  
  
 _One of my political enemies, now, too, if they hate everyone who wears the name of Malfoy._  
  
Zabini let his eyebrows creep up as he shook Harry’s hand. Harry stared back in a calm, controlled way. If Zabini was that close to Draco, he probably either knew or guessed the truth of the demi-marriage. Harry didn’t care about hiding from him.  
  
Maybe he wasn’t as close as Harry had thought, though, because after the handshake, Zabini stepped back and bowed to Draco. “Never let me say that my desire does not endure,” he murmured, and walked away.  
  
Draco went still beside Harry. Harry leaned against him and sipped from his glass of champagne, giving a loud and fake laugh for the benefit of anyone watching when Draco glared at him. “Why did he say that?” he murmured, with his mouth concealed by the rim of the glass.  
  
Draco shook his head. “It’s a quotation from a poet that Blaise used to be fond of. But he used to say it when he lost a chess game. He meant he would always want to win, even if he was playing me or Pansy. Now…I don’t know.”  
  
Harry shrugged. Maybe Zabini was part of whatever hidden game existed against the Malfoys, but he didn’t think so. Probably they had blocked some political plan of his, or future plan of his, by the demi-marriage. Pure-bloods seemed to have all sorts of things like that, and it just had to be lived with.  
  
“Do you want to dance?” he asked Draco, pitching his voice loud enough for everyone to hear, while he took the glass away from Draco and put it on a table nearby. Another man who’d been aiming to set his drink down there glared in outrage. Harry gave him the kind of scowl he practiced on criminals who wouldn’t confess, and the man hastily retreated.   
  
“There isn’t much space,” Draco said, looking ahead down the center of the room  
  
Harry looked, too. Ordinarily, this must be a fairly large meeting room, but they had moved out all the tables, chairs, and maybe desks and cubicles, that normally occupied it. A glamour of blue and white occupied the walls, and clouds of shifting shapes drifted by, now and then suggesting fish in the sea, now actual clouds in the heavens. There was a narrow strip of uncarpeted floor that they could use to dance, but most of the space was filled with chattering clumps of people, loud laughter, and their waving arms and glasses that seemed to need their own personal boundaries.  
  
“I know,” Harry said, and took his hand. “We don’t need much space for the kind of dancing I have in mind.”  
  
 _That_ got heads turning. Good. They hadn’t discussed this part of the evening, since Draco would respond more naturally if he didn’t know exactly what Harry intended.  
  
Draco glared at him, sure enough, and stepped like a nervous gazelle when Harry reached for him. “What do you mean?”  
  
God, he really was high-strung, Harry thought, watching him, watching his pulse flutter and the flame in him seem to blast and blaze through his eyes. But beautiful, in a way.  
  
 _Well. Beautiful in that I know he can be more than this, that he can survive a war that terrifies him, and being the Dark Lord’s torturer, and I want to help him be more than that boy was._  
  
“This,” Harry said, and took Draco in his arms, pacing forwards so that they were in the middle of the cleared space. It got bigger fast, as other people pressed themselves up against the walls to avoid bumping into them. Harry looked at avid eyes and flushed faces, and sneered. He was sure that these other people probably  _didn’t_ want to sully themselves by touching a Savior who had married a Malfoy, or else by touching someone who was descended from a Muggleborn, but they wouldn’t go elsewhere and not watch. That told him everything about them he needed to know.  
  
“Like this,” Harry whispered to Draco, staring into his eyes, willing him to remember what they had agreed on. They were quarreling, of course. So Draco could break away after a while, and show everyone how disgusted Harry’s touch made him. Harry kept his arms wrapped around Draco’s waist and closed his eyes, hiding from his own embarrassment by not meeting those gazes.  
  
They swayed, to no music. Harry kept his hands still, though, remembering the way Draco had reacted the last time Harry tried to touch him below the waist. He leaned in, and smelled Draco’s hair, and tried to act like a lover afraid of being rejected.  
  
It was—hard to act that way. Since the war, he’d had all too many people eager to show him that they wanted him. He could have them for the taking.  
  
But he didn’t  _want_ any of them. He felt Draco tensing in his arms, and wondered if Draco was in the same position.  
  
 _I’m sorry,_ Harry tried to say, by slowing the “dance” a little and stepping further away so that Draco could break the hold more easily. They had agreed on this, though, that Harry would act like someone trying to make the best of his unexpected marriage—the way that other people would expect him to act, in fact—and Draco would be the one to push him away. That would give the prejudiced people someone to approach, as they tried to commiserate with Draco over marrying a Mudblood, and the people who hated Malfoys a chance to approach Harry and try to lure him into “revenge” plots against Draco.  
  
Somewhere in the middle of those two groups, Harry thought, they would find their enemy.  
  
But Draco appeared to have lost track of their plan. He just stood there, matching Harry’s movements, with his eyes shut and his cheeks flushed. Harry gazed down at him in bewilderment, and decided to try the tactic that had worked once before. He slid his hand down, and cupped Draco’s arse.  
  
*  
  
This near, Draco could feel something he had not felt before, something he hadn’t taken into account during their plans. Of course, he had been in close quarters with Harry for days, and he should have been able to feel it before now if he was going to.  
  
Harry’s magic.  
  
It was there, burning beneath the surface of his skin, but not tangible above it. Draco had felt it before, from powerful wizards like the Dark Lord, from several feet away. So that meant Harry wasn’t as strong as he had thought.  
  
Draco tried to use those thoughts the way he would have used them before this, to tell himself that he had done wrong with the demi-marriage after all, in marrying someone who wasn’t as strong as his family would need. But when he was this close, and concentrating on Harry instead of the exquisite humiliation of trying to teach him to dance…  
  
The magic wasn’t the strongest he had ever felt, but it was the most comforting.  
  
Draco closed his eyes so that he couldn’t see the expression on Harry’s face, but that only made his father’s face, the expression he would wear if he could hear Draco saying that, float into prominence. Malfoys had comfort, of course they did, the best food and the softest beds and wards that would protect them from any and all enemies, so what did they need of comfort from a Mudblood’s magic?  
  
But it was there, the warmth beneath his cheek, blazing and shifting, restrained as a hearthfire built by Ossy. Harry could have lashed out with that magic if he wanted to, could have made it sharp and spiky and hard to manage, but he hadn’t, and Draco knew what that implied about Harry’s thoughts concerning him, as well.  
  
Harry wanted to protect him.  
  
And he was touching Draco’s arse.  
  
Draco’s hands clenched down into cloth and skin and flesh at the thought—he felt Harry wince—and then he spun away from him and glared at him.  
  
Harry’s eyebrows rose for a moment, but then he seemed to remember the plan they were there to enact, the plan that Draco had let himself shamefully forget up to now. He nodded and turned his back, his arms folded and his spine so stiff that Draco thought for a moment he would break his shoulder blades.  
  
“Fine,” Harry said, as though responding to a conversation too soft-voiced for the others to make out. “If you want to be that way.” And he stalked off in the direction of the drinks table, his heels audibly striking the floor.  
  
Draco stood there for a moment, his face flaming. For all that they had planned it, or Harry thought they had, it was uncomfortable to be the target of so many gazes.  
  
Then the first people started coming forwards, Blaise among them, and pressing champagne into his hands, and murmuring gentle, understanding words about how hard it must be to be married to a Mudblood, and Draco remembered his part and smiled bravely at them, lifting the champagne to his lips.  
  
*  
  
Harry stared down at the drink in his hands without seeing it. Someone had offered him a plate of food, but Harry had curtly refused. He would probably fling it at someone if he held it, or at least drop it all over his robes and embarrass himself, and that wasn’t the kind of embarrassment he wanted to project.  
  
 _Damn, Draco._  
  
Harry had been watching Draco’s face at the end. Not hard to do, when Draco hadn’t reacted the way he was supposed to and Harry had started worrying that someone had drugged or enchanted him into a state of non-responsiveness without Harry noticing.   
  
His lips had been parted, the flush on his cheeks as gentle as Harry had seen it during the demi-wedding ceremony. His hands had curled into Harry’s shirt without gripping, reminding Harry of the way that victims he managed to rescue sometimes nestled close to Harry when he freed them.  
  
And then his sudden, violent reaction.  
  
Harry shrugged. Probably, Draco had been lulled by the dancing into a bit of forgetfulness, and had reacted out of genuine embarrassment at the end. Harry wouldn’t have done that, but he and Draco weren’t the same person.  
  
 _I wouldn’t want to be._  
  
He paused with the glass’s rim resting against his lips. No, he wouldn’t want to be Draco, but he hadn’t thought that because he disdained the pure-blood Malfoys and all they stood for, as he ordinarily would. He had thought that because—  
  
“That was vicious.”  
  
Harry put the thought away in a safe place for later and turned around. Behind him was a tall, stately witch with a face that looked mildly familiar. She smiled a little and said, “Angelina Bulstrode.”  
  
 _Right. Millicent’s mother._ Harry remembered that Draco said she had married a Squib, or a Muggleborn—one of the two. He wondered if she was resentful enough of the Malfoys to want to destroy them.  
  
“The way I danced with him?” Harry nodded to her. “Perhaps I should accept that as a compliment, but I find it hard to do.” He didn’t think he needed to work to put bewilderment and anger in his voice.  
  
Bulstrode laughed softly, and moved a step closer. There was a necklace of pearls gleaming above her dress, and Harry found himself looking at it instead of into her eyes. Her gaze had a peculiar, penetrating sharpness to it, and he was sure that she was a Legilimens. He’d had enough of his thoughts being read.  
  
“No,” she said. “The way he pushed you away. He certainly seemed to be enjoying himself up until then.” She cocked her head and examined him from head to foot, as though expecting some flaw hidden under his clothes. “What do you think prompted that?”  
  
“I could tell you,” Harry said, with a negligent little gesture of his hand that he tried to exaggerate so she would think he was more drunk than he really was, “but you wouldn’t believe me.”  
  
“I would find it hard not to believe anything you tell me.”  
  
The declaration  _sounded_ bald and loud and sympathetic. Harry reminded himself that it wasn’t, and stopped his jaw from dropping open before he could gape at her.   
  
Instead, he gave a little snort and turned away, nursing his drink. “I bet you say that,” he muttered, “but you don’t mean it.”  
  
Bulstrode put a hand on his arm, and Harry had to stop himself from flinching. She was a Legilimens, yes, but that was no reason for her hand to feel sharper and more piercing than an ordinary touch, too. It wasn’t as though she even had very long nails. “I meant what I said,” she said, voice lowered and words a little more serious. “Whatever you told me, I would believe. I have known the Malfoys for a very long time, and they are an—uncomfortable family to be around.”  
  
“Then I would be uncomfortable for you, too,” Harry replied gently, pulling away. “Because I’m part of the family now.”  
  
Bulstrode’s mouth fell open, and she stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “But surely—you don’t mean—”  
  
“I do mean,” Harry said, bowing to her, a little amused that she couldn’t seem to stop silently spluttering. “I was forced to take the name Malfoy when I married into the family, and thus I’m among your acquaintances now.” He paused, staring at her, hoping the glamour would aid his features in forming the proper mask. “Or am I among your enemies?”  
  
“Of course not.” Bulstrode took a step back, and then seemed to calm. Her prickling hand came to rest on her pearl necklace instead. “Excuse me,” she added. “I remembered something that I wanted to do.” And she turned away and faded back into the party with none of the ease she’d used to approach him.  
  
Harry glanced around, but it seemed as though no one else wanted to come up to him right now, either. He sipped more at his wine and wondered where Draco was. He couldn’t see him mingling, supposedly the most important thing at these parties.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned against the sink in the bathroom and shut his eyes. He felt as though his secret was painted on his forehead for anyone to see, in blazing letters that would glow in the night like that awful paint one of his ancestors had used in his mother’s rooms.  
  
But what secret?  
  
 _That I like Harry’s magic, that I find him comfortable?_  
  
Draco shuddered a little. Well, at a party like this, when they were trying to pull off the impression that they were quarreling, something like that could well be a problem, yes.  
  
He reached up to smooth his hair, and caught a glimpse of a blurred shadow in the mirror a moment before someone stabbed him in the back.


	17. A Malfoy Defense

Harry moved closer to the bathrooms, his head cocked as he listened. It seemed strange that he hadn't seen any sign of Draco among the party for nearly ten minutes now. Draco had emphasized over and over again the importance of keeping themselves in the public eye, and hiding wouldn't accomplish that.  
  
Harry let one hand rest on the bathroom door, and heard nothing, felt no tingle of magic that would announce protective wards or a Privacy Charm. He shook his head and pushed it open anyway. He didn't know if there was room for more than one person in there at a time or not, but the door gave easily under his hand.  
  
He stepped into the room, and immediately stiffened. There  _was_ magic he recognized here, a subtle Shadow Charm, one that would dim the light in the room and make it hard for anyone who stepped through the door to immediately see the whole of it. Harry had seen it used mostly in dungeons and potions laboratories and other places where Dark wizards had some secrets they wanted to keep. He fell back so that his spine was pressed to the door and lifted his wand, calling light harsh enough to push through even the magical shadows this particular spell could summon.  
  
The spell fought back for a moment. It was shielded and cushioned with something else, a different kind of charm that Harry had also seen Dark wizards use. It was meant to make magic difficult to disperse, and Harry knew the best way to fight it.  
  
It was also a spell that would reveal his presence to anyone hiding in the room, since he didn't have the power to cast it nonverbally, but surely anyone here would have heard the creak of the door and seen him by now. Hiding inside the shadows and looking out wouldn't give anyone the same difficulty as trying to see through it from outside.   
  
" _Finite Incantatem_ ," Harry snapped, pushing all the strength he could muster into his voice.  
  
For a moment, the combined charms of shadows and maintaining the shadows fought him anyway, lashing back in a confused clash of magic that gave Harry a kind of grudging respect for whoever had cast it. Harry was about to repeat the  _Finite_ when the shadows dissolved in a rush, and he could see what lay under the sink.  
  
Draco, a long, bloody wound in his back, drizzling blood slowly onto the tiles.  
  
Harry rose onto his toes with the need to rush forwards, and the same instincts that forbade him to do it. Yes, Draco might die without intervention, but this could also be a trap, and Harry could trigger the wards or charms that surrounded Draco by getting close enough to help him. Instead, he forced himself to go through the defensive magic that Aurors would use in such a situation, to detect such trouble spells and disarm them, without taking his gaze from Draco. That long, long look--surely casting the spells had never taken so long?--was enough to convince him Draco still breathed.  
  
But might not for long.  
  
Harry at last felt free to dash forwards and fall to his knees beside his demi-husband. He wrapped his arms around Draco and turned him slightly to the side so he could see the extent of the wound. It was longer than he had thought, taking up almost the whole of Draco's back, and Harry had to swallow a few times against the urge to be sick.  
  
Then he shook his head. What mattered was what he could do now to heal Draco and spare his life, while also remaining secret enough to fool whatever enemy had done this. It seemed strange that that enemy had used a physical weapon instead of a spell, and also hadn't remained at the scene to make sure Draco was dead. The situation called for secrecy until Harry could determine what was going on.  
  
He was good enough with Clotting Charms to stop the blood from spilling out, and he could have knitted the skin back together again, but that would have blocked the access of Healers to any internal damage. Harry shuddered at the thought of them having to tear Draco's wound open again to find out what was wrong.   
  
So he did something different instead, and whispered, " _Diffindo_ ," above his arm, cutting a shallow groove, similar to the wound in Draco's back, from his elbow down his forearm, keeping away from the delicate veins at the wrist. As the blood flowed out, he stuck his wand in it and murmured another spell that Hermione would be horrified to find out he knew.  
  
The blood sparked as though a golden star was sinking into it, and Harry nodded. It was ready. He tilted his head so that his blood, supercharged with magic and strength, poured down his arm into Draco's mouth. Then he had to work Draco’s throat and lips to make sure he swallowed instead of wasting it.  
  
That spell had been developed originally for strengthening vampires when they were at the end of their reserves. It didn't have as dramatic an effect on a human, but Draco gasped as he swallowed, and his eyes fluttered. Harry also saw the way he tried to heave himself up on his elbows, and nodded. The draught of his blood and magic would at least keep Draco conscious for long enough to cooperate with Harry, and he would have a fighting chance of replacing the blood, too.  
  
"What happened?" Draco whispered. He tried to move, and hissed.  
  
Harry nodded again. "Someone stabbed you. Knife, from the looks of it. I don't know why they didn't use a spell--"  
  
Draco laughed a little, brokenly, and Harry paused. "The demi-marriage rituals," Draco whispered. "They're supposed to let one of the spouses know if someone inflicts magical harm on the other. There were times when someone would have murdered a Malfoy spouse to try and get their hands on the inheritance. A--physical weapon—wouldn’t alert you."  
  
 _So that means our enemy is a pure-blood,_ Harry thought, and then grimaced and shook his head. So was everyone at the party. There was no trying to narrow down their suspect pool that way.  
  
"I don't know when it happened, I don't know who did it, and they might still be nearby," Harry said, in a close murmur near Draco's ear. "So we have to have a different story for leaving and getting you to the Healers instead."  
  
Draco nodded, to his surprise. "Of course. We can't go exposing weakness." He turned his head enough to face Harry. "What do you suggest?"  
  
Harry told him the plan he'd come up with, and had the satisfaction of seeing clarity in Draco's eyes.   
  
"Just do it quickly," Draco muttered, and closed his eyes and seemed as if he was about to try and burrow into the floor.  
  
"I'm not going to do it without Bracing Charms," Harry pointed out, and began to cast them, so that while Draco's limbs would seem to be jouncing around on his back and shoulders, they would in fact be held in place by invisible, inflexible bonds of air. He paused before casting the same on Draco's back, plus a shield to keep anything from coming in contact with the wound, but Draco did nothing except flinch and hiss a little.  
  
"You're so brave," Harry murmured into his ear. "We'll get out of here safely and find out who did this, don't worry." He arranged his arms carefully into place, and then stood up with Draco draped over his shoulder, casting strategic Lightening Charms as well so that he wouldn't collapse under the weight. "Come on."  
  
*  
  
Draco hung there, dangling, as Harry slammed the bathroom door open and staggered back out into the party, and blinked at nothing. It was easy to do that and not show anyone he was still conscious, because his head was dangling and his hair flapped around his eyes.   
  
If he thought about how undignified he looked, his blush would roast him alive from the inside out. So he let his head dangle, and thought about the compliment Harry had given him instead.  
  
No one had  _ever_ called him brave before.  
  
It wasn't the kind of virtue that his parents or Professor Snape would have valued, and his Aunt Bellatrix, the one who had praised him the most during that long and horrible year when the Dark Lord lived in the Manor, had done it when he showed ruthlessness in his role as torturer or when he caused himself or her pain trying to learn Occlumency. The others around him, the people who would have been on Harry's side and the Slytherins trying to avoid the Carrows' gaze, thought "bravery" a way of standing out and looking stupider than the rest, or else a virtue that, merely by the House he was Sorted into, he wouldn't possess.  
  
 _He thinks I'm brave for lying there and not saying anything about the pain.  
  
Or he thinks I'm brave for going along with the plan and not making any complaints, even though I might have, because who would trust a Gryffindor with a plan like this?_  
  
Draco had to shake his head as he thought about that. Then he remembered, and kept it still, hanging down, while he listened to the joking banter that Harry exchanged with the people around him.  
  
"Yep, got drunk on the champagne. No, I don't know,  _either_. Lying in the bathroom in a puddle of vomit. Yeah, it isn't any more pleasant to clean up than it was to hear about. Please take my compliments, and these Galleons. You'll probably have to get house-elves in there to clean up the tiles completely."  
  
Draco managed a hard smile at nothing. The story of him being a drunk would cover for them with the other people at the party, and make the person who had stabbed him wonder what had happened, if it was possible that Draco could have healed himself before Harry found him or if Harry was so stupid as to mistake blood for vomit. Either way, they would be in a fever of uncertainty, and that was a state Draco always preferred his enemies to be in.  
  
It wasn't a plan he would have thought Harry able to come up with, admittedly. If Harry admitted he was brave, perhaps Draco would have to return the compliment and call Harry intelligent soon.  
  
Then Draco's mind turned to the next problem vying for his consideration. The enemies who had attacked them when the Manor was still unwarded had used mercenaries and a dragon. This enemy had stabbed him in the back.  
  
Harry would probably explain the change in behavior as their enemy getting desperate to see Draco pay for whatever crimes they wanted vengeance for, but Draco didn't think so. Someone who came up close and personal to try and kill him didn't fit the planner who had the money and skill and contacts to hire mercenaries and a dragon trained for this sort of thing, and neither did Draco think someone desperate would have waited more than a week since the last failed attack to strike at them, or bolted before they were sure of their kill.  
  
Which meant they had more than one enemy.  
  
 _Wonderful._  
  
*  
  
Harry walked with Draco over his shoulder until they were well out of the party, and then touched his back just below the wound. It felt no worse than before, but that still meant it needed the personal attention of Healers, and Harry was unwilling to risk waiting any longer. He touched Draco's heels and asked in a murmur, "Do you think you can go through Apparition?"  
  
"I'm sure I can't go through the Floo," Draco said, in a restrained, ironic tone that made Harry picture, for a moment, the kind of friendship he and Draco might have had when they were younger, if that had been possible.  
  
Harry shuddered as he imagined the kinds of wounds that Draco would probably get if he tried to take him through the Floo, inexperienced with it as  _he_ was. He still tripped when he came out of it, half the time. He nodded. “All right. Then Apparition it is.”  
  
Harry kept looking around as he slung Draco’s arm over his shoulder and cast another charm to wrap the wound in warmth and protective bindings. This would be the perfect time for someone to attack him, while he was involved in settling Draco and didn’t have his full attention on all the movements around him.  
  
But nothing happened before they Apparated. In the end, Harry thought, as he closed his eyes and focused on St. Mungo’s, maybe their enemy had shot his last bolt when he stabbed Draco, and knew that he couldn’t get close now without rousing suspicion.  
  
But Harry didn’t dare believe so, because they couldn’t be that lucky.  
  
They came out near the front entrance of St. Mungo’s, and Harry walked briskly, floating Draco beside him when he grunted with pain. Draco opened his mouth. Harry gave him a single intense look. Draco shut his mouth.  
  
Harry nodded, satisfied with how well that particular tactic worked.  
  
They arrived in hospital with the first blood just beginning to leak through the bandages Harry had wrapped around the wound. Harry sighed and spoke to the mediwitch who’d started to her feet at the sight of them. “Can we get some attention here, please?”  
  
“Your names?” The mediwitch sounded faint, which meant she had probably recognized both of them already, but she still bravely took a quill and poised it above the parchment. Harry felt a brief stab of fellow feeling. Hermione would make him do the same kind of official things, in crisis situations.  
  
“Harry Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy,” Harry said. “Draco Malfoy needs immediate care for a long wound in his back.”  
  
The mediwitch’s eyes widened, but she wrote down the information and then nodded to a couch against the far wall. “Please put Mr. Malfoy down there, Mr.—Malfoy.” She whisked away to get help before Harry had even turned around.  
  
“Your voice faltered.”  
  
Harry frowned down into Draco’s face as he rearranged his limbs. As far as he was concerned, Draco should have fainted by now, or be screaming—anything that would let Harry  _accurately_ judge how much blood he had lost and how much pain he was in. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Your voice faltered.” Draco’s eyes were open and too bright and staring straight at him. “That was the first time you’ve said your new name in front of someone else.”  
  
Harry sighed and flopped down beside him, although he took care not to jounce the couch itself, which would have jolted Draco’s wound. “You’re the only one who would notice something like that in the state you’re in, you wanker,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. “Yes, it was. So my voice faltered. I’ll get used to saying the new name in time. I’ve only spent the first twenty-five years of my life as Harry Potter. I’ll live longer than that with your name.”  
  
Draco went very quiet. Harry thought he might have drifted off to sleep, and started when Draco’s hand brushed his knee, and he murmured, “You regret the demi-marriage.”  
  
“I know it happened,” Harry said. “I don’t dream of a way out of it. I can put up with it. That’s as much enthusiasm as you’ll get from me on the subject.”  
  
“What about all those private reasons you supposedly married me for?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course you want to talk about this,” he said, opening his eyes and turning his head. Draco’s eyes shone as though lit from within. Although his were a few shades darker, they reminded Harry far too much of how Narcissa’s looked for comfort. “The wards haven’t really had a chance to protect me from reporters yet, and there hasn’t been time for anything I might have liked the silence and privacy for. It’ll probably be years before there is, with the amount of pure-blood homework I have.”  
  
Draco said nothing. He seemed to be breathing with difficulty now. Harry shook his head at both of them. If Draco didn’t have the sense not to talk when he had a wound of that magnitude in his back, then Harry should have had the sense for him. He leaned back and shut his eyes, breathing gently, awaiting the moment when the Healers would come.  
  
It seemed to take a long time, and Harry cast the Clotting and Warming Charms on Draco again. Then the mediwitch who had taken their information down pattered back towards them, her face set in an expression halfway between a wince and a frown.  
  
“Well?” Harry asked, and looked behind her. There were two Healers in their green robes standing there, but neither of them made a motion to come towards them. Harry smiled with  _all_ his teeth, and saw them almost tear up their robes scrambling backwards.  
  
“The Healers are very sorry,” said the mediwitch, sounding as though she was reciting a message she’d memorized. “But Mr. Malfoy cannot be treated at this time.”  
  
Draco’s eyes popped open. Harry raised his hand before Draco could speak. He knew exactly where this was coming from, and it was time to make it clear that he wasn’t going to tolerate it.  
  
“Really?” he asked mildly. He tilted his head at the Healers. They still peeked out, although he could only see their eyes and the tips of their noses now. “Because it looks to me like there are two over there who aren’t busy.”  
  
“They are,” said the mediwitch, who was wringing her hands. “Very busy. You have no idea how many patients we get on a daily basis.”  
  
“I don’t know the exact number,” Harry said, and then stood up and looked around the empty room. By the time he turned back, the mediwitch was cringing.  
  
“You might have heard about some of the things I did when I still had the name Harry Potter,” Harry said conversationally. “The way that I destroyed a Dark Lord and then destroyed the Dementor ghosts to save the world.”  
  
“Mr. Potter—Malfoy, I mean, no one is saying that  _you_ —” The mediwitch shut her mouth and turned away in confusion.  
  
Harry nodded. “I suspected that,” he said, and made his voice gentle enough that the mediwitch looked as though she didn’t know whether to get close to him or cringe away from him. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to put up with it. Think about the ways that I destroyed people and magical creatures.” He put his hand on his wand. “And consider that I haven’t had a chance to acquire a reputation using the Malfoy name yet. Do you want St. Mungo’s to be the site of the first triumph I have?”  
  
*  
  
 _He can’t do that. It shouldn’t work this well._  
  
Draco watched from under his eyelids, reluctant to show he was awake. For one thing, Harry might begin paying attention to him then, instead of the people he needed to punish, and Draco thought that would be a pity.   
  
For another, the Healers might try to speak to him. And Harry was doing a more than adequate job of defending Malfoy interests.  
  
He  _did_ stand more gracefully, Draco decided, as he watched Harry stalk towards the mediwitch. And those green robes became him. Ossy had made a good decision when it came to Harry’s clothes, although truthfully, Draco hadn’t known the little elf ever to make a bad one, except when it came to keeping cake away from him when Draco was younger.  
  
 _Look into a Malfoy’s face, bitch,_ Draco thought in brittle satisfaction as he watched the mediwitch stare up at Harry.  _You may not have believed the articles in the papers, but my husband takes our marriage seriously._  
  
It gave him hope as he wondered what else he might be able to persuade Harry to take seriously, which hadn’t seemed possible so far. Perhaps giving up his Auror career. Perhaps acting more reserved in public.  
  
 _Maybe that’s another reason that they didn’t send out the Healers until now,_ Draco thought idly, as he watched the Healers finally surge into action and hurry across the floor of the waiting room towards Harry.  _That glamour is covering his face and not showing his anger. His voice ought to tell them, though._  
  
Draco concentrated, but although his senses were fuzzy from the pain, he didn’t think that he could feel Harry’s magic surging around his body, the way that he could with powerful wizards like the Dark Lord and his Aunt Bellatrix. That made no sense, really. Harry had saved the world twice, as he said, and he had to be a powerful wizard to do that.  
  
 _Maybe not._  
  
It was a disappointing conclusion that Draco was coming to as he thought about it, but it might be right. The first time, Harry had only won because of the coincidence of the Elder Wand’s ownership and with a Disarming Spell. The second time, he had taken strength from his friends to defeat the ghosts, and strength from Draco’s mother and Draco’s wand, by his own admission. Maybe he wasn’t strong in and of himself.  
  
Draco sighed. That was less than good for his family, yes, if they had a protector who was not strong magically. It meant any heirs Harry might have for the Malfoy family after he divorced Draco and married someone to have children would not be magically strong, even if they would be rich and as determined as Harry.  
  
For the moment, though, Draco tried to put aside thoughts of the future and listen to the present conversation between Harry and the Healers. He was curious about what they would say.  
  
*  
  
“Listen to me,” Harry said, cutting through the load of bollocks about regrets and the war and former Death Eaters that the Healers were trying to feed him. “My husband could be  _dying._  You are going to heal him, and now.”  
  
The Healers stared at each other helplessly. Then one said, “But he killed people.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “So did a lot of the prisoners in Azkaban, and they get medical care.”  _Now, they do,_ he had to admit. That hadn’t always been the case. But Shacklebolt had been good for the Ministry in a number of ways. “You’re going to do it.”  
  
The nearest Healer, a grey-haired man, shrank away from his tone, but the woman stood upright and met his eyes. “We’re only enacting hospital policy,” she said. “There are certain people of certain last names that we cannot treat here.”  
  
Harry snarled and lifted his wand. He was angry enough to do it, and there was no one to tell him it was a bad idea. That was all that mattered.  
  
“ _Diffindo Semper_ ,” he said, and the cut on his arm where he had fed blood to Draco earlier opened and began to pour. Harry smiled at them. “That cut won’t close except through some fairly complex spells,” he said conversationally. “So you’re going to have someone else named Malfoy bleeding out on your nice clean floors, and you’ll have him die, too, unless you change your mind. And if you change your mind about one person named Malfoy, then you might as well change it about someone else.”  
  
Things moved fairly quickly, after that. 


	18. The Best Decision

“You’re an idiot.”  
  
“Hello to you, too,” Harry said, closing his eyes and then opening them again. He was lying on a bed in the middle of what looked like a large hospital room, certainly large enough to contain more than the two beds it did at the moment. Of course, the Healers had probably wanted to isolate him and Draco, for understandable reasons.  
  
Harry turned slowly over in the sheets and looked at Draco. Draco lay on his stomach with his head turned to the side to face Harry in what looked like a painful twist. Neither fact had diminished the raw fury in his gaze, and when Harry had flinched from it, Draco looked down at the bandaged arm bound across Harry’s stomach.  
  
“Oh, that,” Harry said, and shook his head. “I couldn’t think of another way to make them treat someone named Malfoy except using my political power against them. I gambled they wouldn’t want to risk offending me even if my name  _isn’t_ Potter anymore, and I was right. What?” he added, when Draco’s stare simply burned him as before. “Weren’t you saying that I should remember to use my name’s power more? It was just a different kind this time.”  
  
“You still did it by injuring yourself,” Draco said.  
  
Harry sighed. “Do you need more reassurance that I’m not actively suicidal? I can give you that, if you like. I knew the spells the Healers used on me. I could have used them if they still refused to treat us, and then I would have taken you and gone to a place where someone owes me a favor and would have to take care of you. Plus a stop at the papers. They would have known all about it before an hour was over. But the Healers didn’t want me doing that, so we both got medical care. I knew we would.”  
  
“You still did it by injuring yourself,” Draco repeated.  
  
Harry shook his head. “They weren’t treating you. They weren’t  _going_ to treat you. Can you think of something else I could have done that would have been one half as effective? Because I’m waiting to hear it, if you can.” He leaned forwards and fixed his eyes on Draco, waiting.   
  
*  
  
Draco had already ascertained that the long wound in his back had been cleaned out and cared for, in a way that made Harry’s simple spells look incompetent—which of course they weren’t. They were only simple, and that made it hard to remember that they had probably saved his life while Harry got ready to take him to hospital.  
  
 _But they make it easy to remember that he’s probably not very powerful._  
  
Draco shook his head a little to get that notion out of his thoughts, and leaned forwards. Harry was sitting up in the bed facing him. His mouth was set in the smallest of stubborn lines, and he tried to fold his arms before he remembered the bandage that clung to the left one and winced a little. Draco wished that he could shake the idiot until his neck snapped for being so  _stupid_.  
  
“You shouldn’t hurt yourself for something like this,” he said. “You should come up with some other method.”  
  
“You could have been dying,” Harry said. He was leaning forwards, on the edge of his bed, and his eyes had a glitter in them that Draco didn’t think he’d seen before. “I didn’t know. I don’t know enough about Healing to be able to tell, actually. That means that I had to act as quickly as I could, and  _that_ meant using the first plan that came to mind.”  
  
Draco eased back a little. If he pressed, he would only start another argument like the one that had sprung up between him and Harry when Harry healed Weasley, and that thought made Draco miserable. “Fine,” he said, hearing the crisp ring in his voice and hoping Harry heard it and understood the reprieve Draco was offering him. “Then what we need to address is the fact that you turn to plans that require you to injure yourself as your first resort.”  
  
Harry was smiling. Draco chose to call it that, anyway, although it had lots of teeth to be a smile. “I saved your life,” Harry said. “I saved George’s life, and you came in time to stop me from using that stupid spell that would have drained me of life-force. I know that I need to think about it more  _carefully._ But in this case, I understood exactly what the spell would do, and how to stop the bleeding if the Healers didn’t react the way I wanted. It was a different case.”  
  
Draco shook his head. He knew he should have better words for this, but honestly, it wasn’t a situation that had come up before, the Malfoy ancestors having better sense than to injure themselves in the pursuit of what they wanted. “You should think about injuring your enemies before weakening yourself,” he said at last.  
  
Harry spread his arms, wincing a little as the bandages on his wound pulled. But not much, Draco noted. Harry was used to more pain than he felt right now, that much was certain. “Point me at an enemy, and I’ll be glad to do something about them. But we don’t know who they are yet.”  
  
“The Healers—”  
  
“Wouldn’t have taken well to an attack on them, the way they did to this.” Harry cocked his head, and his grin flashed, so mischievous that Draco had to bite down on the temptation to smile back, which would have given Harry the wrong idea. “I think that was one reason they treated us at all, actually. They thought I was mad when I cut my own arm, and they wanted me out of their hospital and their care as soon as possible.”  
  
Draco bent his head into his hands. Listen to Harry for much longer, and he would start believing the fool that this had been the only real thing that he could have done.  
  
“All right,” he said finally. “This is a fundamental philosophical difference between us, and we’ll address it when we get home.” He ignored the way that Harry mimicked him in an undertone. “For now, I do have to ask you if the Healers said anything about when we could get out of here.”  
  
“They told me that I could go home today,” Harry said, and lounged back in the bed. “Your wound will take a day or two longer.”  
  
Draco grimaced. “You should go. Affy and Ossy are going to need help watching my mother, and Healer Bowman asked to be told the minute there was any change.”  
  
“There are two of them, Affy and Ossy,” Harry said quietly, never moving. “One of them can take the other’s place when the first one gets tired, and they don’t need to tend to us right now. You, on the other hand, have only me to protect you.”  
  
Draco stared at him some more. He wanted to say that no one would dare attack him in St. Mungo’s, but their experience had already proven that wasn’t true. He licked his lips and tried to think of a way to make Harry go home, to tell him that he wasn’t needed.  
  
“You can save your breath.” Harry was leaning back in his bed, his eyes closed and his voice drowsy. “If our enemy can attack in the middle of a pure-blood party, he could attack here. And the Healers already refused to treat you unless I vouched for you. They might change their minds again if I leave.”  
  
“She needs you,” Draco tried. It would make him feel much better to have Harry in the Manor with Narcissa—  
  
And lonely and cold without him.  
  
Draco shook his head. He couldn’t consider that. “The head of a family has to think of everyone in his care, not only himself,” he said, when he realized that Harry was looking at him, and had cocked his head as though wondering why he didn’t agree.   
  
“But that  _includes_ himself,” Harry said. “You could waste your life, if you die here. And who was it who told me about the Malfoy family’s powerful resources?”  
  
Draco scowled. “You don’t need to turn everything I say into a—a weapon against me.” It was the only way he could think of to express his irritation.   
  
“I’m not trying,” Harry said. “But I am using your own standards. If I have to obey them, and keep the good of the family in my mind at every moment, so do you.”  
  
Draco’s hands clenched. Then he forced himself to lay his head down, mimicking Harry, except that because he lay on his stomach, he couldn’t actually lean back on the pillow and lounge.  
  
“Someday, you will understand what I mean,” he said. “Someday, you might even understand what I mean without bloody  _resisting_ me all the time.”  
  
“Should I hope for that?” Harry’s voice was light and unemotional, but Draco could hear rustling from his direction that might indicate his hands was exploring the sheets. “Should I hope that I’ll learn your standards and you’ll never see my perspective? I thought we did our best when we were  _exchanging_ information, instead of sitting back with a pout and pretending that only one of us was at fault.”  
  
Draco shifted his gaze over to Harry. Harry looked back at him, his lip curled and a challenging light in his eyes that made Draco want to retreat.  
  
But while what Harry said made sense, what Draco had said  _also_ made sense. He put his head up and said, “If you’re going to insist on being respected, then you have to respect me.”  
  
“When have I said I didn’t?”  
  
Draco gave up in exhaustion. He wasn’t used to spending so much time with someone who didn’t understand some pure-blood matters instinctively, the way his mother and father and most of his friends did. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll discuss it in a few hours, when we’ve had some sleep. And I want you to  _rest._ You can’t defend me if you’re exhausted.”  
  
Harry said nothing. Draco sighed and drifted off to sleep on the waves of a sea that seemed thicker and darker than he remembered it. Had he really been wounded that badly? Perhaps he had. Sleep seemed more productive than arguing with Harry about Malfoy standards right now, anyway.  
  
*  
  
Harry waited until he was sure that Draco was asleep to roll his eyes at him. Then he got out of his bed and padded over to Draco’s, letting his wand hover for an instant above the wound in his back. It looked all right from a distance, but this close, Harry could see how much area was covered in white gauze that should have been clear and unprotected skin, and shuddered.  
  
Yes, the wound was healing cleanly, the charms he cast told him. Not that he thought the Healers would try to poison Draco, not now, but they could have messed something up in their extreme haste. Harry sighed and sat back on the bed, shaking his head as he regarded Draco.  
  
“You’re doing the same thing, you idiot,” he muttered, making the argument now that Draco wasn’t awake to refute him. Maybe that was cowardly, but Draco had been in pain, and Harry hadn’t wanted to subject him to more. What mattered was having his say in a way that Draco wouldn’t hear, so he would be less stubborn about things later. “The  _exact_ same thing. You’re valuing your life less than mine, and arguing that it doesn’t really matter what you suffer so long as the family’s safe.”  
  
 _You could be less stubborn, then, if he won’t yield._  
  
It was the sort of thing Hermione would have said if she was here, and it would have annoyed Harry greatly. But that didn’t mean she was wrong. He leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees, and watched Draco, and brooded.  
  
He  _could_ change, if he cared about hurting the person enough. He had been ready to quit Auror training for Ginny once upon a time, when she confessed that she was having nightmares about him dying at the end of a Dark wizard’s wand, and asked if he please wouldn’t consider some other career. But then they had broken up, and there was no reason important enough to keep Harry from doing what he really wanted to do.  
  
He could do certain things for Draco. Not argue with his standards. Put on glamours that would cover his emotions in public. Be polite to his friends. Leave the Manor when they started having an argument about Weasleys, rather than staying to confront him.  
  
But he couldn’t do all of it, because their bond was—less flexible. If he was angry with Ron and Hermione, Harry had learned, he could stomp and yell for a while, and then go off somewhere and fume. They would still be waiting when he was ready to either apologize or explain more calmly why they were pissing him off. The time that Ron had left him and Hermione during the Horcrux hunt was actually beneficial that way. It had taught them that Ron would always come back, and Harry and Hermione had learned that lesson, too.  
  
If Harry and Ginny’s bond had endured, he would have learned the same thing with her. They would have circled around each other in bright rings, sometimes close, sometimes distant. Harry was learning that he got along best with people like that, when the deep affection was never in doubt but they could have some time alone, too.  
  
But with Draco, there was no way he could yield once and back away, because he would have to live with him for the next five years. And Draco wasn’t someone to think that yielding meant Harry could argue back later. He would consider the argument settled, and be utterly surprised if Harry tried to bring it up again.  
  
Harry had to fight for equality here, or they would never get anywhere.  
  
He sat guarding Draco for a while, and turned his head only when the door opened. If it was a Healer, Harry had polite words all prepared about how he planned to stay in hospital until Draco was released and they could leave off trying to get him to depart.  
  
But it was Hermione, who gasped a little when she saw him and then raced forwards, arms out. Harry caught her close, though he made sure to shift back so their embrace wouldn’t shake Draco’s bed and wake him up. He thought it likely that Hermione didn’t see Draco at all. Her eyes were fastened anxiously to his face, and she reached out a hand as if to smooth back his fringe from his forehead, flinching only when her fingers brushed against the curved tail of his dragon scar.  
  
“We heard you were here, but not directly,” she whispered, ferocity in her voice that made Harry wince and feel bad. “Someone happened to see you, and they told someone else, who told Ginny, who told  _us_. What happened, Harry? Why didn’t you contact us first thing? Did you think that—”  
  
Draco stirred as if he would wake. Harry motioned Hermione away near his bed, and then put up a Privacy Charm. He didn’t want to go out into the corridor and discuss this right now.  
  
“Someone stabbed Draco at the Ministry party we attended,” he said quietly. “We played it off as him being drunk, so we could get out of there. Then I brought him here, but the Healers refused to treat him, because of his last name. So I cut my arm.” Hermione’s eyes had already gone to the bandage on his arm, but she shut her mouth now, her nostrils flaring so hard Harry was surprised she didn’t hurt herself. “I told them that if they didn’t want to treat one person with the Malfoy name, we could go elsewhere, but surprise surprise, it was really only Draco they objected to treating. And here we are.” He spread his arms, and waited for the scolding. With Hermione, he expected it.  
  
“You  _moron_!” Hermione hissed, taking his arm and moving it back and forth to stare at the wound. Harry doubted she could see anything useful through the bandage, but then again, she had surprised him before with how much she managed to glimpse. “What spell was it?”  
  
“ _Diffindo Semper._ ”  
  
Hermione let his hand fall and slapped his shoulder. “The one that nearly killed you last time?”  
  
“I know the counters now,” Harry said mildly. “I had to perform them to your satisfaction, and then Molly made me prove I knew them when she cast the spell on me. So I knew perfectly bloody well what I was doing, Hermione, thanks. And it was the only thing I could think of to get them to treat Draco. We were rather short on time.”  
  
Hermione opened her mouth, then blinked and leaped off after the new thought like the squirrel she sometimes resembled. “ _Molly_ used that spell on you?”  
  
“It was shortly after Ginny and I broke up.” Harry grinned at her. “I think she was still a little upset with me. But it worked as a test, too.”  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Anyway, you took a risk.”  
  
Harry felt his smile melt off his face. He knew it was just because Hermione was with him when he reached the end of his patience, rather than because she, in particular, had triggered his temper, but he was bloody well going to say this anyway. “My  _life_ is a risk, Hermione. I did it when I went up against Voldemort, and when I went up against the Dementors, and when I became an Auror, and when I married Malfoy. I risked unhappiness and losing my friends over your anger against Malfoy, if nothing else,” he added, because he knew she was already drawing breath to say that the last situation wasn’t comparable to the rest. “I know what I can do, what I can live with, and what I can’t. Trust me, by  _now_ I know.”  
  
Hermione stared at him for a moment, then sighed and lowered her eyes. “I know, Harry,” she whispered. “I just—I wish that it could be different.”  
  
Harry smiled at her and hugged her. “I know you did, and I honor you for the wish. I’m glad you have it. I’m glad you’re my friend. But Draco’s already let me know his opinion of what I did, and it’s not flattering, either, although he phrases it in terms of Malfoy resources and one of us needing to remain whole to serve the family. It’s over. Let it go.”  
  
If Harry had learned that his friends would always come back no matter what, Hermione had, miraculously, learned to let things go in the last few years. She huffed out a last sigh of protest and nodded. “Fine. Loathe as I am to agree with Malfoy on anything. How have the Healers treated you since you’ve been here?”  
  
Harry snorted. “Carefully. They explained all the spells they used on Draco to me, and the ones that they used to clean out my wound and stop the bleeding, too.” He grinned at her. “I didn’t tell them I already knew those. It was as good a check on the truthfulness of what they said as anything else I could have devised.”  
  
Hermione made a soft, unhappy noise. “I hate that you have to do this. I hate that some people are going to see you as the enemy just because you have Malfoy’s name now.”  
  
Harry shrugged, as indifferent as he could be, if not as indifferent as he was pretending to be. “I had enemies when I was Harry Potter, too, and most of the time, they hated me for reasons as stupid as they hate me now. I’ll put up with it. I can always put up with it, you know, Hermione. I’m a lot tougher than most of them think.”  
  
“I wish you didn’t have to.”  
  
Harry kissed her cheek. “No more fervently than I do, I promise,” he said, with enough wryness in his voice to force a smile out of her. “Anyway, we ought to think about how we’re going to handle the immediate consequences of this, not the great and overarching question of blood, philosophy, and everything.”  
  
“Do you want me to tell people about what the Healers did?” Hermione asked. “Or confront them myself?” Her eyes were filled with the light of battle.  
  
Harry made a rude noise. “No. A direct threat isn’t the way to go here. I already had to do that, and it won me treatment, but they’ll be prepared for it, now. I think we should leave the threat of blackmail subtle and in the background, and someone else who can do a better job than me should remind them of it.”  
  
“Like me?” Hermione was practically hopping up and down in her need to be useful to him.  
  
Harry silently turned his head, and she followed his gaze. So their eyes fell on Draco at the same time.  
  
“ _Him_?” Hermione asked. “You really think—you think he would be the best person for the job?”  
  
Harry cocked his head. “Do you know anyone better? He’ll be fighting to defend his own interests, and he has some unique advantages. That bloody Mark on his arm makes some people think he’s dangerous.” He had hesitated at the thought of asking Draco to use it, when it would bring up the past, but he thought Draco might relish that, might take the chance to remind everyone that just because he had been a coward once was no reason to think the same of him now. “And he still has some people who might listen to him, some friends who came to that party we had in the Manor. The tale will spread.”  
  
“But not the way I would spread it.”  
  
Harry held Hermione’s eyes and nodded. “I think that’s an advantage, in this case.”  
  
Hermione pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything, which proved that his point had been made.  
  
*  
  
Draco lay there with his eyes open, although he had turned his head so neither Harry nor Granger would notice, and played through, in silent shock, the conversation between them he had just overheard. Granger had stopped fussing when Harry told her to. Harry had rejected her assistance and complimented Draco without her getting angry.  
  
He had  _come up with a plan._  
  
And he wanted Draco to implement it.  
  
Draco would, of course. He would love having something to do that would make him useful, rather than simply the wounded victim that Harry had had to rescue. And Harry had almost certainly known that, or thought it through unconsciously when he suggested to Granger that Draco play this part.  
  
 _He can think, when he wants to. He_ says  _that he only can when it comes to emergency situations, but he can do it in calm ones, too. Or come up with something that sounds an awful lot like it._  
  
Draco dug his fingers into his sheets. His father had said once that Draco was never satisfied with anything, that if you gave him a stuffed Kneazle he would want a real one soon enough, and then he would want a lion chained to guard his bed. Lucius had said it laughing, proud of his son, proud of the fact that he had strong desires, which were necessary in a head of the Malfoy family.  
  
Now, Draco’s strong desire pointed a certain way.  
  
 _If you can plan, if you can think, Harry, then I want you to do it all the time. And I’m going to see to it that you do.  
_


	19. Around the Corner

“Why did you let me sleep this long, Ossy?” Harry snapped at the house-elf as he tugged his shirt over his head and then smoothed it down over his stomach with a few angry pats.  
  
He and Draco had come home last night, and Ossy had immediately appeared in Harry’s room and glared at him. Harry couldn’t figure out why until Ossy had come back with a new set of clothes. He supposed that he  _had_ slept in his dress robes in hospital, but for Merlin’s sake, he’d used charms on them to ensure that he didn’t come back to the Manor stinking. So the honor of the Malfoy family ought to be clean.  
  
But it seemed Ossy didn’t consider it was until he had dressed Harry in a new set of loose-fitting clothes that looked like they were somewhere between robes and pyjamas, and then hustled him into bed and fed him. Harry had been concerned over Narcissa, assuming that Affy was doing the same for Draco, but Ossy had told him they were both under his care and then vanished before Harry could contest him.  
  
Now he had discovered it was nearly ten-o’clock in the morning, and God knew what Draco would do to him for being late to breakfast.  
  
Harry suddenly realized Ossy hadn’t answered, and looked up again. It was unlike him not to let Harry know what was going on in his mind, and this seemed a rather strange thing not to have an answer for.  
  
He discovered that Ossy was pinching his own chin with long fingers, and staring at Harry broodingly. Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. “Does my shirt not fit right?”  
  
“Master Harry Potter was needing sleep.”  
  
Apparently that was the answer to his first question, and he wouldn’t get a second one, because Ossy would have popped him out of this shirt and into a different one in moments if it didn’t fit, and also expected Harry to know that. Harry rolled his eyes again and moved for the door.  
  
Ossy disappeared—and appeared in his way, so that Harry would have had to trample over him to get out. Harry halted and stared at him. Ossy went on pinching and stroking his chin, but this time he met Harry’s eyes while he did it.  
  
“Master Harry Malfoy is not being feeling well.”  
  
Harry looked down at his arms, wondering if he had broken out in welts from some hex that he didn’t remember. It was true that his left arm still bore the bandages that the Healers had wrapped around the wound, but Ossy had stared at them and sniffed them—which was disturbing—yesterday and then declared them fine. So Harry didn’t know what Ossy had to be concerned about.  
  
“What do you mean?” he asked, swallowing experimentally, in case he had started to develop a sore throat from some of the food Ossy had had him eat yesterday. Good food, yes, but still richer than most of the things Harry had been used to eating in his life.   
  
“Master Harry is not  _doing_ well,” Ossy said, and stamped one foot as though Harry should be able to read his mind. “Master Harry is being worried too much.”  _Those_ words came out in a stiff and measured manner, as though he was making a great concession to Harry’s obviously limited intelligence.  
  
“I don’t know what you mean, and I already overslept,” Harry snapped. “Draco probably has books laid out in the library for me, and then this afternoon I’ll need to watch Narcissa. Excuse me.” He edged around Ossy.  
  
“Master Harry is doing other things.”  
  
That sounded like another of those prophecy-proclamations that Ossy was fond of making. Harry cocked his head back towards him. “Then you should speak to Draco about that,” he said. “Because I’m pretty sure those are the things that he wants me to do.”  
  
Ossy did some more glaring, then threw up his hands and disappeared. Harry sighed. He didn’t want to irritate Ossy, who seemed to care about him, but he honestly didn’t know what Ossy  _meant_ , either, and he was going to be dealing with enough things where he didn’t know what they meant today, given the pure-blood history books he had to read.  
  
Draco wasn’t in the dining room, after all. Harry reckoned that made sense, when he thought about it. Draco’s wound had probably kept him in bed, and Ossy would fuss a lot more about Draco as an invalid than someone like Harry whose cut was already healing.  
  
He grabbed a few scones from the plate of them sitting in the middle of the table, spread them with the butter and the honey that either Ossy or Affy had left there, and retreated to the library. He would beat the words of the history book into his head by force if necessary. Hermione sometimes said that applying a book to his forehead would make him learn more than simply  _teaching_ him.  
  
But she said that about Ron, too, so Harry didn’t think he needed to worry.  
  
*  
  
Draco smiled and signed the letter with a flourish. Harry had come up with a good plan when he’d left it to Draco to blackmail the Healers of St. Mungo’s. Draco could imagine a subtle and credible threat, while Harry would probably still be scowling at the parchment and sucking at the tip of his quill in bewilderment.  
  
 _Not necessarily._  
  
Draco leaned back with a frown as he remembered that—that Harry had revealed his capacity to think when he came up with this plan, and that he could think, after all. Draco wondered what he was doing right now, and whether it had anything to do with his thinking capacity.  
  
He snapped his fingers, and Ossy appeared, looking as though he was in the middle of a long baking session, from the apron draped on his head. Draco had never known why Ossy particularly wanted to protect his ears and head from the flour and sugar he handled, but as long as he continued to wear something suitable over his groin, it wasn’t Draco’s business, either.  
  
“Master Draco Malfoy is being in bed,” said Ossy, glancing over Draco’s position, flat on his stomach in the bed, with sheets pulled up and warmed over the wound. Ossy had done that last night before Draco fell asleep, and the charm was long-lasting, as was the same with all domestic magic cast by a house-elf.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “But I still want to know what Harry is doing. Carry a message to him and ask him to visit me immediately, would you?”  
  
Ossy immediately bobbed his head. “Master Harry is being in the library and studying,” he announced. “He is be coming up here immediately!” And he winked out of existence so fast that he might have been waiting for the order all morning.  
  
Draco blinked at that. He hadn’t specifically told Harry to go to the library and study. If anything, he would have assumed Harry was watching Narcissa, since he seemed to enjoy that more.  
  
 _What made him decide on that?_  
  
Then Draco shrugged. It was true Harry still needed lots of work at understanding even basic pure-blood concepts. He might be more intelligent than Draco had thought, but he couldn’t make plans or understand their enemies without knowledge. Draco settled himself more comfortably and awaited Harry’s coming.  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms wearily. His head thrummed and swam with words, words about pure-blood ancestors and chains of inheritance and the Ministry’s founding and what that had done to the laws of inheritance. Nothing, as far as Harry could tell, except that the Ministry kept more permanent and less easily-accessed records and so some of the faking that had gone on was no longer possible. He had probably missed something, because that seemed too simple.  
  
“Master Harry Potter is coming.”  
  
Harry almost leaped out of his skin. When he got focused on reading, he got  _really_ focused, and Ossy had startled him by appearing like that. He turned around, trying to swallow the panic in his mouth so that he wouldn’t say or spew up something unexpected, and nodded. “Does Draco want to see me? Or want me to start watching Narcissa now?”  
  
Ossy was standing still, his eyes fastened on the table where Harry had been studying. Harry followed his gaze and saw the crumbs from the scones still scattered on the books.  
  
He blushed and waved his wand to Vanish them. Ossy probably spent a lot of time each day cleaning—or baking, if the apron he peered at Harry from under was any indication—and Harry hadn’t meant to add to his trouble. “Sorry. I’ll use a plate next time.”  
  
Ossy looked at him and shook his head. Apparently the sight of crumbs on pages was too great a disappointment to be handled any other way. “Master Draco Malfoy is wanting Master Harry Malfoy in his bedroom,” he said softly, and started to lift his hand the way he usually did when Apparating.  
  
“Can you please guide me there?” Harry asked quickly. He knew the vague direction Draco’s wing lay in, but there were too many corridors for him to be sure, and he’d been too tired last night to really note the direction Affy and Ossy had borne Draco off in.  
  
Ossy appeared closer to Harry’s chair, making him jump again, and once more leaned in. “Master Harry Potter is doing  _well_ ,” he whispered.  
  
Then he turned and walked out of the room, his back firm and straight. Harry blinked after him, then followed after him. He really didn’t know what had changed, except that Ossy seemed to think he had healed from the sickness that was threatening him earlier, and as long as that was changed and he didn’t disappoint Ossy, then Harry thought he might be forgiven for scattering crumbs on the books.  
  
*  
  
“How are you feeling?”  
  
Draco nodded as he studied Harry. He didn’t move as if his left arm hurt him, which Draco thought was probably the best result anyone could expect after using the kind of stupid spell that Harry had. Harry took a chair at the side of the bed and leaned towards him, eyes anxious as he studied Draco.  
  
 _I suppose he does care for me a bit after all._ Draco smiled slightly. “Why do you conceal your intelligence?” he asked.  
  
Harry blinked a bit, then said, “That doesn’t sound good. Are you feeling so bad that you’re delusional?” This time, he was clearly studying Draco’s eyes, looking for some sign of blown pupils or glaze.  
  
Draco scowled at him.  _And I try to compliment him, and he dismisses it out of hand. I should have known that it was more than likely to end up like this._ “Idiot. I’m fine. But the plan you came up with, to have me blackmail the Healers, isn’t something a stupid person would come up with. So I want to know. How long have you been telling people that you can only succeed by being rash when you know full well that you’re capable of devising complex plans like this?”  
  
Harry hunched in on himself and scowled at Draco, as though his words were enough to hurt Harry. “I didn’t say I was stupid. I disagreed with you whenever you brought the subject up in Hogwarts, remember.”  
  
“You implied otherwise with Potions,” Draco snapped, and then took a deep breath. He  _would_ let himself be distracted by this if he waited too long. He wasn’t here to rehash arguments that should have been long over by now, and he wouldn’t let his old perception of Harry distract him from the new one. “Look, Harry. I just wanted to know why you made it sound as if you could only react to something that happened, not act. I should have guessed it when you made that plan to get us out of the party, in fact. You’re smarter than you wanted me to know about. Why?”  
  
Harry shook his head hard enough to make Draco flinch a little at the thought of what a jerk it must have given his neck. “You’re  _twisting_ things again,” Harry complained. “I said I was good at one thing and not another.  _You’re_ the one who’s decided that being good at complex plans and working things out in advance is the same as being intelligent. I just tried to give you a realistic view of what my strengths and weaknesses were. That’s all.”  
  
Draco leaned back, his eyes narrowed. If that was true, then Harry really had done his best, and told the truth as he saw it. Draco didn’t have to think he was lying.  
  
 _No, instead I simply may be unable to trust the way he estimates himself, and have to second-guess him._  
  
Draco worked his hands into the sheets, stroking and clutching the blankets, and said quietly, “Look. We have to be able to work together. If you make a plan in the future, even if you think it’s one I may not approve of, bring it up to me. All right?”  
  
Harry only nodded. “Of course,” he said a minute later, when Draco guessed that the pressure of his gaze had begun to demand an answer. “I wouldn’t keep it from you. I know that’s not the way for us to survive, either individually or as a couple.”  
  
“Or as a  _family_ ,” Draco stressed. “We need to think about ourselves as members of a family, even more than individuals.”  
  
“All right,” Harry said.  
  
Draco watched him in frustration. He still thought there was something he wasn’t reaching, some deep essence of Harry that he hadn’t brought to the surface, and that Harry was hiding from him. But he couldn’t imagine what it would be. He had Harry’s word he wouldn’t keep his concerns to himself, and he knew Harry was intelligent now, not the tower of unthinking brute strength he had thought him. (He had so little strength, in fact). But what did Draco want? Someone who argued with him all the time? That would hardly be in the best tradition of Malfoys and their demi-spouses, either.  
  
“Fine,” he said at last. “I’d like you to go watch my mother now.”  
  
Harry nodded, and stood up, and cast a Warming Charm that made Draco gasp a little. It landed on the muscles around the wound, not directly on top of the injury, and relaxed and loosened them. Draco stretched, groaning. Affy and Ossy were more than happy to cast any magic for him that he couldn’t yet manage for himself, but he had to ask for what he wanted, and he wouldn’t have done it with this spell, which he hadn’t known existed.  
  
“Why did you do that?” he whispered, when he could recover his voice.  
  
Harry shrugged. “You looked uncomfortable,” he said. “This is a spell that’s helped me sometimes when I’ve been wounded on an Auror mission. It worked?” He looked into Draco’s eyes for a minute, and then nodded, looking satisfied. “It worked.”  
  
“Do go  _away_ ,” Draco breathed, leaning his head back into his hands.  
  
He heard the door open and shut, and had no doubt that Harry had done as he commanded. And he would do what else Draco had commanded, and would go and watch Narcissa until one of the house-elves could relieve him.  
  
It was—all that Draco could have asked for, of course. He could so easily have had a demi-spouse who mocked and laughed in the face of the Malfoy family’s traditions, or refused to marry him at all. Given that Harry was the son of a Muggleborn witch and had fought on the opposite side of the war, he was doing well.  
  
Which didn’t explain the  _more_ that Draco wanted from him, or the way that Draco really couldn’t have put what he wanted into words.  
  
*  
  
Harry achieved that state of watchful alertness more easily this time, and counted the time between Narcissa’s breaths and heartbeats without effort. This time, when Ossy appeared next to his chair, Harry could turn to him and nod, recognizing him, without starting and thinking he was an enemy.  
  
“Master Harry is coming downstairs now,” Ossy said, with that hard shine in his eyes that meant Harry had fucked up again, somehow. “Ossy is having to  _fetch_ him.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Ossy,” Harry said. His voice sounded passionless, which was probably the reason Ossy eyed him, but he didn’t mean to sound weak or as though he wasn’t paying attention. It just took him some time to come back to a normal state of mind when he’d been so deep in concentration. “I’ll be there directly.” He stood up and paused, stretching, then cast the charm he’d used on Draco earlier on his own back. The muscles loosened and flowed, and he thought he was ready for the uncomfortable chairs in the Malfoy dining room.  
  
Ossy did some more glaring. Harry watched him with his eyebrows raised, but Ossy said nothing, so Harry walked out of the room and down the stairs he knew well by now, hearing the small bang behind him as Affy Apparated in to take up the watch over Narcissa. So long as she had someone with her at all times, Healer Bowman’s wishes were being obeyed.  
  
Harry wished he had more idea of the right thing to do, that he could accelerate the process Bowman was using to work on a cure for her, or do  _something_ other than simply sit there. But he had seen the perils of acting as a Healer without advice when he nearly killed himself over George. He would wait this time, and do what the Healer said to do, and nothing else.  
  
“You’re late.”  
  
Draco’s voice was sharp as Harry took his seat at the dining room table. He had a cushion behind his back, Harry noted, between his wound and the thin, knobbly back of the chair. He nodded at Draco and began to eat as the first course appeared before him, a soup so thick and steaming that it obscured most of the actual ingredients. Good, though, Harry judged. Some of it was probably beef. “Sorry.”  
  
“Didn’t you  _realize_ it was six-o’clock?”  
  
Harry looked up and blinked. That seemed a silly question to ask, although at first he couldn’t think why. Then he shrugged. “You didn’t tell me the time when Affy would be rested enough to watch her,” he said, and returned to his soup.  
  
“You could have come and  _asked_.”  
  
“How, without leaving her or disturbing Affy’s sleep?” Harry asked. He was proud of himself for remaining so reasonable in the face of Draco’s provocation. Not that he thought Draco was really fighting with him the way he would have fought when they were children. It was just that Draco wasn’t thinking of how Harry could have done or known all this, and his back was probably hurting him. Harry needed to make allowances for his pain.  
  
Draco said nothing. Harry looked up and found his face was twisted as though he’d bitten into a pickle without warning.  
  
“You could have called for Ossy, and sent him to ask me,” Draco said.  
  
He still sounded angrier than the situation warranted.  _Probably because it takes away from the time I can spend with the pure-blood books, and that means I’m more likely to embarrass him when we go out in public,_ Harry realized. “Sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t think of it.”   
  
They ate the rest of the first course, and the second, a flaky silvery fish on a bed of vegetables, in silence. Harry became aware that Draco was stabbing the fish with his fork, so hard the fork scraped and rang off the plate, and winced. “Do you need a pain potion?” he asked. He should have thought to ask before.  
  
“No, I don’t need a  _fucking_ pain potion.”  
  
Harry looked up, gaping. He had heard Draco swear plenty of times, but never in a context like this, with so little prompting. “What?” he asked.  
  
“I would have sent Ossy for a pain potion if I needed one.” Draco leaned forwards. “Just the same way you could have sent him to ask when I needed you to stop watching.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry said, mystified. He didn’t understand exactly what he had done wrong, but maybe not making use of the expected services of house-elves was enough. “I’ll remember that next time. Sorry,” he added, and returned to his fish.  
  
“It’s not enough.” Draco pressed himself forwards, only to hiss and sit back down when his back rose out of the cushion. Harry met his eyes and started to stand up, but the vicious glare from Draco had him sinking back down. “You have to—you have to do more than this.”  
  
Harry laid his fork carefully beside his plate, in the proper position. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You want me to start studying different books? Sit with you? Do something else to promote the Malfoy name? That interview with me that Skeeter did was pretty successful. Do you want me to do another one?”  
  
Draco threw his fork at Harry. Harry ducked it, and came up staring at him again. “I think you do need a pain potion,” he said, and looked around. Ossy popped into being beside Harry’s chair, although he didn’t go for a potion. He just stood there with his eyes twitching and jerking, looking back and forth between Draco and Harry as if he wondered which of them had the right to command him in this instance.  
  
“I don’t need a fucking pain potion,” Draco said, between his teeth this time. “You’re not  _listening_.”  
  
“Tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll be happy to do it,” Harry said. He could feel himself settling into the same calm, patient alertness he had adopted when he was watching Narcissa. Maybe Draco was the one who needed it more, in which case he was even gladder that he’d practiced it.  
  
Draco was silent for long moments, mouth twisted as though he’d chewed something  _else_ sour, and then he said, “I need you to stop being so eager to bloody  _help_ people, okay? Do—something else. Give your passion to me. Argue with me. You sat there watching my mother today and you weren’t hungry at all, you didn’t notice time passing? That bothers me. Why didn’t you notice?”  
  
“Because I’ve done things like that before, in the Aurors,” Harry said. “And I’m an expert at skipping meals. I like eating, but I can go without them for a while before I notice.” He ignored the way that he could feel Ossy staring at him.  _Yeah, so what?_ The house-elf couldn’t be any more interfering or officious than he was already.  
  
Then he had to pause and consider the terrifying prospect that he could, and shuddered a little.  
  
“I want you to come to me and ask,” Draco said, standing up and throwing his napkin on the table. He hobbled away, but when Harry started forwards to help him, Draco hissed at him and gestured Ossy to him instead. Harry stepped back and watched as Ossy made Draco float to the doorway of the dining room.  
  
Draco turned back, cocking his head, to say, “You’re not a servant. You’re my husband. I want you to claim something for yourself, feel emotions,  _talk_ to me. Not just do what I ask.”  
  
He left. Harry sat back down in some bewilderment, and a dessert that seemed to be comprised mostly of cherries in some kind of sauce appeared, glaring at him; it was in the shape of Ossy’s face. Harry had no doubt he was supposed to stay and eat instead of following, so he did that, but never took his eyes off the doorway.  
  
 _He wants me to argue with him? But no, not exactly._  
  
He wants me to—live with him. Show him what I feel instead of keeping everything to myself. I reckon, at least.  
  
But why he wants that, I can’t say.


	20. Friends and Enemies

“They would not dare do this.”  
  
Harry began to move immediately when he heard that whisper. This morning, he had come to Draco’s room instead of going to the library first; yesterday had passed in a peaceful haze of watching Narcissa and studying, and Harry supposed today would, too. But there was no reason to offend Draco by not checking in with him.  
  
Draco was sitting up in bed, his face redder than it had been yesterday. From the way he stared at the letter in his hand, though, some of the red came from anger. He thrust the letter towards Harry, and then turned away, glaring out the window.  
  
Harry took the letter, subtly eying Draco’s back as he did. The bandages looked fresh. Ossy had been here, then. But the area they covered was smaller than before, and Harry turned back to the letter in some peace of mind.  
  
He blinked when he realized it was on official parchment, even heavier and crisper and less likely to bend than the parchment the Ministry would use for similar letters. He turned it over, and saw the seal clinging to the broken wax. He whistled softly. A hand clutching a raised wand and rays of light around that wand. He knew it, because he’d studied it, but it wasn’t one the Healers used anymore.  
  
 _Mr. Malfoy,  
  
That you think you can threaten us speaks volumes of your great self-conceit and very little of your common sense. You blackmailed us into treatment. I cannot be sorry when it saved lives. But this clears every debt between us. We will be suing._  
  
 _Sincerely, Gilbert Ready, Head Healer._  
  
Harry looked up. Draco had turned back to him, and there was a dull fire in his eyes that Harry didn’t understand at first, until Draco said, “You came up with the plan. It was a good one.  _I_ was the one who couldn’t make it work.” He turned back to the window.  
  
Harry said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “You weren’t the problem. This Healer is.” He rapped the letter thoughtfully against his hand. “But something about it bothers me.”  
  
Draco turned around again, and Harry suppressed the impulse to say something about how much all the turning would affect his back. Draco probably knew all about what would and wouldn’t affect his back. “ _Something? One_ thing? I can’t believe that.” He gave a bitter little snort that went to Harry’s heart.  
  
“I don’t mean that,” Harry said. “I mean that I haven’t heard of Gilbert Ready before. I didn’t even know St. Mungo’s had a Head Healer. I thought it had Heads of the various wards, and those Healers worked together to train mediwizards and coordinate, oh, treatments of epidemics, all the things they can’t handle by themselves. But I know enough about the Ministry to know that I would have heard of him before now, because he would have been invited to all those bloody parties the Ministry wanted me to go to.”  
  
Draco’s smile came and went, quick as a mouse fleeing from an owl. “And now I’m going to make you go to a different set of bloody parties.”  
  
Harry half-flipped his hand. “I signed up for it. The Ministry used to tell me that they would never make me do publicity, and then they changed their minds.” He frowned at the letter. “Have  _you_ heard of him?”  
  
Draco drew his legs up, his eyes half-closed. Harry was coming to recognize that as a sign he was thinking deeply. “No,” he said at last. “But I haven’t paid much attention to St. Mungo’s since the war. They were never a cause that my father had given much time or attention or money to.”  
  
 _And I followed what my father did._ Harry knew that without Draco saying it. It only made sense, because Draco had suddenly found himself head of the family and struggling to maintain the Malfoys’ position in society. Harry nodded. “Well, then he might exist, but that we haven’t heard of him, with our fairly wide knowledge of wizarding society, makes me suspicious.” He smiled. “So we’ll see what he says to a direct challenge.”  
  
Draco stared at him. “You’ll duel him?”  
  
Harry laughed, and watched the way Draco’s eyes changed in interest. Maybe this was what he had meant, when he wanted Harry to respond to him with more of what he was. In that case, Harry could do it. He had only thought about keeping so quiet before because it seemed the best way to avoid arguments. “Not what I meant, but I can see why you thought I would,” he added teasingly. “I am one for the reckless plans, aren’t I?”  
  
“Perhaps not as much as I thought, if this isn’t one of them.”  
  
Harry gave him a little bow, and left him to think about that as he wanted. “What I’m going to do is take this straight to the papers. It’s true that Ready—if there is such a person—might have anticipated that, but they can’t blackmail us the way we could have blackmailed them. Everything happened in public, and there’s lots of people to be witnesses, from the Healers who tended us to the mediwitch who told us the Healers weren’t allowed to treat Malfoys. We have no reason to be afraid of a scandal. They do.”  
  
Draco raised a half-protesting hand. “If something happens to my mother because of this…”  
  
Harry nodded gently. He understood why that would be the first fear on Draco’s mind, and he couldn’t say it was an unreasonable one. “We’ll do what we can to make sure she isn’t disturbed. At the very least, we can trot out Healer Bowman as an example that some Healers don’t mind treating us.”  
  
Draco’s face had gone shuttered again, which meant Harry had done something wrong again, only he didn’t know what it was. He waited a second in case Draco wanted to tell him, but Draco only folded his hands on the bed and said, “Well, since you’ve got it all figured out, you could go and begin it.”  
  
Harry hesitated when he would have stridden away. “Draco, do you want—”  
  
“ _Go._ ”  
  
 _Wrong, then. Somehow._  
  
But Harry reminded himself that Draco was probably reacting this way partially because of pain and because he felt helpless right now with the threats coming from everywhere. He bowed quietly and left, shutting the door behind him so gently that he didn’t think it would disturb Draco.  
  
*  
  
Draco shut his eyes and shook his head. He wanted to lash out at something, but the taste in his mouth was cool, fresh, small, as though he had brushed his teeth with the paste that Ossy was always wanting him to try, less astringent than the paste Draco had used for years.  
  
Harry had come up with a plan. Harry had talked about himself as though he was a Malfoy. He had looked at Draco with direct, clear eyes, seemed to blink at what he saw there, and looked away again. He had said he would protect Draco, and then he had gone away again.  
  
How  _could_ Draco deal with that?  
  
He’d always had someone to guard him as a child, but it was almost ten years since he had been a child. He became a Death Eater to protect his parents. He had to be the head of his family when his father went to prison. Even though his mother hadn’t been someone he needed to stand against the world for, she had accepted that position because he was the head of the family and her birth family was all dead or estranged from her.  
  
Now here came along someone and scooped up the position of a protector from him, and told Draco to stay in bed, and patted him, and smoothed his hair, and then marched out the door as though he had no idea what it had cost Draco to say yes.  
  
Draco didn’t know how to handle that.  
  
For now, though, the wound would keep him down and in bed even if he tried to stop Harry. And what Harry proposed wasn’t a bad plan. It had the same virtues as the first one, recognizing what he could do and what Draco couldn’t, right now. Draco’s strength was subtlety, so he would handle the plan when they needed it. Harry’s strength was his directness, so he would march firmly into the face of danger when they needed someone to do that.  
  
Draco opened his eyes with a gasp. He knew why this bothered him, now that he thought about it, knew in a way that he never would have if he hadn’t been forced to lie still and let his furious brain work on it.  
  
Harry was acting as though they were the team Draco had thought they would take years to become. Yes, he was doing it in an exasperating  _way_ , and Draco wanted the flash of laughter and temper he had seen today, not the mindless obedience Harry had tried to give him yesterday, because that wasn’t real and it would crack apart the first time they faced a harsh challenge. Harry had to give the real him to the Malfoys or they would never have a stable future.  
  
Draco made plans. He thought he would have a reluctant spouse, and made plans for that. He thought he had someone who could only take reckless actions in an emergency, and accepted it. He thought he had someone of great magical power, and gratefully built on the notion. Then he found out Harry could plan, and he accepted  _that_ , too.  
  
But Harry kept introducing new factors, and shifting the ground under his feet, and making Draco scramble to keep up.  _At the same time_ as he was building their demi-marriage into something like the partnership Draco had envisioned. They could work together, and hand power over to each other, and strive side-by-side towards the family’s goals, because as wearying as it might seem, they were still working for the family.  
  
It was wonderful, but unpredictable, and Draco had always needed certainty of some kind in his life. He didn’t know what he would do without it.  
  
 _And I might never have it again._  
  
*  
  
Harry grinned as Hermione’s face appeared in the fire. She sat up when she saw his grin, and nodded. “Something happened with the Healers, didn’t it?” she demanded. “I  _knew_ it would. They can never let things  _go_ , the idiots. Give it here.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I’ll come to you. I think you should see the letter, not just hear about it, and I don’t know if Malfoy wants you in the house yet.” At the very least, he thought, Ossy might chase her out with a flapping apron. He hadn’t been happy about Hermione even being on the grounds to help with the wards.  
  
Hermione snorted, rolled her eyes, and moved aside. “Come through, then.”  
  
The fire flared bright around him as Harry tossed in the Floo powder, and stumbled out into Ron and Hermione’s kitchen. He always stumbled, it was a fact of life. Just the way that Draco had glided out of the Ministry’s Floos the other night looking perfect and as if he’d never even  _heard_ of soot.  
  
Harry shrugged.  _We make a good complement to each other, sort of. I can accept that, sort of._  
  
He handed the letter to Hermione and nodded to Ron, who was sitting at the table and eating. Ron raised an eyebrow back at him and waved a hand at the letter. Harry shrugged. He didn’t know yet how serious it was, or how far he would have to go to counter it. Perhaps the Healers weren’t expecting opposition at all, and would crumple at the first sight of it.  
  
He found himself hoping they didn’t. He would like to fight a  _proper_ enemy again, rather than someone who hid in shadows, or sent dragons, or was married to him and sometimes seemed like a friend.  
  
Ron crunched into an orange, and Harry leaned back a little as it sprayed him with juice. Ron grinned with the pulp between his teeth, said, “Sorry,” while not sounding very sorry at all, and swallowed. “What is it?”  
  
Harry gave him the letter, since Hermione had finished with it and looked on the verge of boiling over. Ron kicked his chair back as he read it, his eyes growing wider and wider all the while. Then he handed the letter to Harry and said, “Holy shit.”  
  
“You could use more dignified language, Ron,” Hermione murmured, but her hands were on her hips, and her eyes were bright and remote. “They’re going to regret doing this, Harry,” she added out of the side of her mouth.  
  
Harry nodded, and stole an orange from the bowl of them on the table. When he used his nails to slice the skin open, juice spilled out of it, sweet and tart on his fingers when he licked them off.  _Like Draco,_ he was thinking. “I thought they would. But I think maybe the best course would just be to go to the press now.” He paused, because Hermione was shaking her head. “Why not?”  
  
“I haven’t heard of Gilbert Ready,” Hermione said. “ _That_ part is suspicious. But the Healers had to know that they wouldn’t make you back away so easily.”  
  
“Why?” Ron pointed out sensibly. “They seem pretty stupid.” He took another bite of orange, and Hermione cast a spell that sent the spraying juice fluttering back across the table. Ron spluttered as it stung him in the eyes and nostrils.  
  
“Because he’s Harry Potter,” Hermione said, and then caught Harry’s eye and blushed. “Sorry, Harry.”  
  
“It makes sense that you would make the mistake,” Harry said, and cut loose another section of orange to finish. “I still think of myself the same way most of the time.”  
  
Hermione frowned, but didn’t pursue that, to Harry’s secret relief. “They have to know you won’t back down, especially after that scene in hospital. They probably have an article being prepared, or maybe it’ll be published soon, that tries to explain that side of the story. They’re trying to steal a march on you, and frighten you. They’ll also try to paint themselves more sympathetically. It’s only common sense.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Fine. But does that mean cutting out going to the papers altogether? I’ll go as a heartstricken victim then, still worried about my husband, and my new marriage, and how fragile our family could be if we have to deal with a lawsuit at the same time. I’ll plead with the Healers not to do this.” He finished the last section of orange and grinned at Hermione. “That ought to get them. You know how they swoon when I cry.”  
  
Hermione tried not to grin, but she was bad at hiding her emotions. She nodded. “Yes, Harry, they do. But are they still going to love it when you’re Harry Malfoy?”  
  
Harry pressed the back of his wrist against his forehead. “That only makes my position all the more pathetic. I’m the man who gave everything up for honor or love, depending on the way we want to present it. My family name and my freedom and the choice of a marriage for love.” He saw how Hermione flinched, and hurried on. He didn’t want  _Hermione_ becoming a victim of the delusion that he was trying to encourage in other people. “Make it saccharine and sobby enough, and there’s no reason they won’t love it.”  
  
Hermione tilted her head to the side and nibbled her lip a little. “It’s true that that should work,” she said. “Are you going to discuss it with Malfoy first?”  
  
Harry started a little. “Yes, I reckon I should,” he muttered, and reached out for the letter. “And there are other things I need to do, too.” He turned away, squaring his shoulders for the trip back through the Floo.  
  
“That’s all you do now,” Ron said.  
  
Harry turned and looked at him, since he certainly wasn’t in the habit of leaving his friends’ house to Floo back to Malfoy Manor. Ron was standing up, and his grin was gone, and he leaned his hands on the top of the table as if the hold was all that kept him from dashing it to the ground. “You devote yourself to the things you  _have_ to do,” he said. “The things you need to do. You’re all duty.”  
  
Harry flinched, this time. It was the same thing Draco had accused him of, or it sounded like the same thing, but what was he supposed to do? He had to study, and he had to watch Narcissa, and he had to become part of the Malfoy family, and he had to defend Draco against their enemies. It was telling, maybe, that that last part was the only thing he  _liked_ doing, but he had been an Auror for years and fighting against Voldemort before that. It wasn’t as though this was new.  
  
Because he had no real answer for Ron, he smiled weakly at him and reached for the Floo powder. Hermione touched his arm and looked into his eyes at the same time as Ron said, “We’re here for you, mate, whenever you’re ready to admit that you need help.”  
  
Harry tightened his shoulders, and said nothing. Instead, he cast the powder and disappeared into the fire, and came out in the small room he had disappeared from. He made sure the Floo was closed and went towards the stairs, still clutching the letter.  
  
 _Strange that I ran down here feeling so happy and now I’m almost afraid to face Draco._  
  
Harry sighed. Yes, strange, and stupid. He cast a charm that would Vanish the soot he was probably tracking in, and went upstairs.   
  
*  
  
“Nice of you to come see me.”  
  
Harry didn’t respond to that, just drawing up the chair next to Draco’s bed and saying, “Hermione says the Healers wouldn’t do something like this without some sort of backup plan. So they probably plan to publish an article that gives their side of the story. She hasn’t heard of Gilbert Ready either, though, so that’s likely a lie.”  
  
Draco stared at him. That hadn’t been the kind of thing he’d expected to hear Harry come back with, and so he had to muster his words to get past his astonishment. In the few seconds that took him, Harry leaned towards him, eyes intense and concerned. “What is it? Has the pain in your back got worse again?”  
  
Draco wanted to close his eyes or scream in exasperation, one of the two, and managed to content himself with a loud sigh. “ _Listen,_ Harry. There’s other things we can talk about than my wound.”  
  
Harry blinked and gestured at the letter on Draco’s legs. “I thought we were.”  
  
“Just don’t assume that everything I see and feel right now is traceable back to the wound,” Draco snapped. “That’s all I’m asking.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, face blank and eyes bright and withdrawn and obedient and  _bloody fuck,_ Draco could not take this for one more  _moment._  He shot his hand out and grasped Harry’s wrist, pressing the bones down.  
  
Harry yanked his hand back at once, with a motion that showed he had been trained how to react. He cradled the wrist, too, and glared at Draco. “What did you do  _that_  for?”  
  
“To get a response,” Draco said grimly. “Stop acting  _mindless_ with me. Stop acting  _like a bloody house-elf._ I don’t just want apologies. I don’t want perfection.”  
  
“Oh, yes?” Harry’s voice was low, but his eyes were savage enough to challenge the dragon’s that had attacked them. “You could have fooled me, from all the lectures you’ve been giving me on proper Malfoy behavior.”  
  
Draco smiled in spite of himself, because  _this_ was what he was talking about, the sharpness and the way that Harry leaned towards him as if he couldn’t help himself, instead of staying apart and aloof and discrete in a way he was never meant to. “There’s a difference between behaving properly and acting as though you can barely stand me.”  
  
Harry wrinkled his nose, some of the glint leaving his eyes, but he didn’t pretend that he had no idea what Draco was talking about, to Draco’s intense relief. “What do you mean? You know that this isn’t a marriage of love. And I thought it was the other way around, that you hated being obliged to marry me. That you hated me for what I did to your wand.” He looked at Draco’s basilisk wand, resting on the table.  
  
Draco shook his head impatiently. “You made up for it by marrying me. And I haven’t taunted you about that lately, have I? It’s my mother I’m worried about, but you’ve been doing more to guard her than I have, lately.” It was striking him as a bit strange, suddenly, that he had asked Harry and the elves to watch her, but never gone himself.  
  
“Well,” Harry said, and scratched at his hair. “But you dislike my manners, and you wanted me to read all those books, and I still hurt Narcissa. How can you forgive me for that? How can you forgive me for everything I lack, and if you don’t care, why do you want me to study so hard?”  
  
Draco sighed. “I can want you to act more like a pure-blood without hating you.”  
  
“But what I  _am_ is what you claim to want,” Harry said, fixing his gaze on him. “What I am is also uncouth and rude and loud and crude and Muggleborn. How can I give you what you want without also giving you what you don’t want?”  
  
Draco grimaced. Put like that, it did sound like a paradox, yes, when he honestly hadn’t meant it to. He sighed and leaned back, turning over gingerly. His back felt well enough for such a thing to be possible.  
  
“I want you to study, yes,” Draco said. He was picking his words as carefully as though they were roses gone to thorns, and from the way Harry watched him, he knew it and could barely breathe through anticipation of what would come next. “That doesn’t mean I want you to control your emotions in private. That’s the difference. Show me your emotions in private. Try to control them in public.”  
  
Harry relaxed in such a rush that Draco wondered why he didn’t fall over. He nodded. “I can do that,” he said. “I can try to do that, at least.” He smiled at Draco, bright and winsome. “I thought I should do it all the time, and then I was getting upset that you didn’t like it when I was showing you controlled emotions. But I never thought you wanted me to display everything I felt. I just thought I wasn’t hiding it well enough.”  
  
Draco hesitated, then reached out and took Harry’s hand. “I don’t deal well with uncertainty,” he said, as close to an apology as he could come. He  _hadn’t_ told Harry to control his emotions in private; that had been Harry’s misunderstanding. “When I never know whether you’ll come up with a brilliant plan, or what you’ll do next, it unnerves me.”  
  
Harry nodded thoughtfully, stroking Draco’s fingers in a pleasant way. “I think we’ll always argue,” he said. “That was another thing I thought I was doing wrong, making you angry. But if I try to explain what I’m doing, will you explain what you want?”  
  
“A fair bargain,” Draco said, relaxing still more. They could do this, this improved version of the demi-marriage he had thought he would have.  
  
 _Why not be content with what he was doing? Obedience was what you thought you’d be lucky to get at first._  
  
And that question, more than any other that had arisen so far, Draco couldn’t answer.   
  
Except to say that he had seen Harry was capable of more, and so he wanted that  _more._  Perhaps he had always been greedy over Harry Potter, and the change of name mattered less than he had thought.


	21. Checkmating Desire

“Master Harry’s is being a visitor.”  
  
Harry looked up from the books. Excitement seemed to have made Ossy even more incomprehensible than usual, but he watched the way the little house-elf was hovering, and made what he hoped was the right deduction. “There’s a visitor?” he asked, casting a few spells on the books that ought to make sure they stayed open at the pages he was reading, instead of flopping shut. “At the Floo, or the front door?”  
  
“The  _Floo_ ,” said Ossy, and stopped flapping his hands for a moment to glare at Harry. “The wards is not letting people through  _to the front door._ ”  
  
Harry grinned a little as he stood. “All right. I’ll see them.” Draco was asleep, Narcissa was asleep with Affy tending her, and it was Harry’s private opinion that neither of them was in any shape for visitors anyway. At least not hostile, questioning ones, which was likely to be the case unless the visitor was Ron or Hermione.  
  
 _There are some things even they might question, though,_ Harry thought as he followed Ossy down the corridors towards the overly-decorated room that contained the public Floo,  _and they’d be right to do it, too._  
  
Such as the way Harry was feeling more and more at home in the Manor. Those dark memories of Hermione being tortured here, of Luna and Ollivander and everyone else being held captive in the dungeons, didn’t bother him now. He woke up in the night from fewer nightmares than before; it was easier to remember the thick wards, and wallow in the thick blankets, and turn over to go back to sleep.  
  
 _I don’t want to change myself too much,_ Harry thought, as he paused outside the door of the Floo room to make sure that his fingers weren’t covered with dust and ink, a far too common occurrence when he was looking through those old books.  _I hope I can strike a balance between being Malfoy and being Harry._  
  
He stepped into the room, feeling he was prepared for everyone from a Healer to one of his friends.  
  
Everyone, it seemed, except the face that actually waited for him in the fire. It was Blaise Zabini, raising one eyebrow and making Harry feel underdressed and underprepared with that one simple gesture. Harry tried his best not to show it, moving slowly over the thick gold carpet instead to stand in front of the fireplace. He nodded.  
  
“Zabini,” he said. “If you wanted to speak to Draco, he’s resting right now.” The Healers had indeed come out with an article yesterday, one that said they’d treated Draco and Harry but hadn’t wanted to. It made them look like arseholes, which was good enough for the moment. “I’ll tell him you firecalled, though.”  
  
“Resting,” Zabini said, with an inflection and timber that Harry didn’t like at all. “How strange.” Then he seemed to reconsider, and smiled at Harry. “Well. Strange if one remembers that you supposedly took him  _drunk_ out of the party, and no worse. But then the St. Mungo’s Healers said that he showed up injured on their premises, and someone made them break their own vow not to treat Death Eaters. How did that injury happen, I wonder?”  
  
 _Shit,_ Harry thought, as he tried to meet Zabini’s gaze blankly, as he tried to keep his racing heartbeat from showing, and knew by the deepening of Zabini’s smile that he hadn’t managed to succeed.  _I never considered that._  
  
Which only proved that he was no good at this intrigue, no good at being a Malfoy. Harry threw his caution away. “You can ask Draco when he wakes up,” he said, and moved to shut the Floo.  
  
“I’m not the only one who’ll make the connection,” Zabini said quietly, in a tone that Harry thought could command Muggle traffic to stop. “I’m not the only threat you’ll have to deal with, if I’m right and Draco was injured at the party?” He paused, looking inquiringly at Harry, and then nodded. “I’m right. Really, Draco shouldn’t leave the open book of your face lying around.”  
  
“Not the only one, but the only one I have to deal with right now,” Harry said, and this time, he really did mean to shut the Floo. Zabini flung out his hand, and shook his head.  
  
“You’ll want more than this to convince me to shut me up, Potter,” he said. “ _I_ want more than this. And I have a bargain to propose to you that ought to satisfy the both of us, our different wants and needs and desires. Will you permit me to come through? This will only take me five minutes to explain,” he added, when Harry hesitated.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. Something he had read in a history book that morning came back to him. “I will let you through if you promise on your name not to destroy or damage anything or anyone in the house.”  
  
Zabini blinked at him, and then laughed, a deep, soft sound that Harry supposed made him popular at parties that didn’t have anything to talk about. “Where did you find that one?” Before Harry could respond, he shook his head and went on. “You’re delightful. If my decision hadn’t been made so long ago…”  
  
Harry refused to worry about what  _that_ meant. “Are you going to make the bloody promise or not?”  
  
Zabini sighed. “I promise on my name not to destroy or damage anything or anyone in the house.” He settled back, waiting for Harry to open the Floo.  
  
Harry nodded, grudgingly, and glanced once over his shoulder. Yes, Ossy was still in the room, staring at him, although that could be because he knew Harry would need him there to serve refreshments to Zabini. “All right.” If something went wrong, then Ossy knew more about the defenses of the Manor than Harry did, and he could always throw Zabini out again.  
  
“Thank you,” Zabini said, as he stepped out of the Floo and dusted himself off with a single shake, and without a stumble. That was something pure-bloods must learn from birth, Harry thought. “Now. Shall we be more comfortable?” He glanced around the room and lifted his eyebrows at the lack of adequate furnishings.  
  
There  _were_ chairs, though, even if they were tall chairs with the sort of uncomfortable backs that Harry found intolerable in the dining room. He gave Zabini a bright smile and sat down in the nearest one.  
  
“And then, there are times that I’m glad my decision was made long ago,” Zabini muttered. He took the chair across from Harry, crossing his legs and folding his hands on top of his knees as though that was the only approved method of doing it. “Now. I know you married Draco for convenience, and out of guilt.”  
  
Harry met his eyes, and said nothing. “If you  _know_ , then you wouldn’t believe me if I tried to contradict you,” he said, when Zabini’s gaze had become too challenging to ignore.  
  
Zabini laughed again. “Yes, I see,” he said. “Anyway. I know how demi-marriages work. You don’t yet, because you came in from the outside instead of from within our circles, as is usual for these things, but you’ll learn.” He paused.  
  
“You can’t expect me to know what all the little hesitations and nuances of your talk mean, either,” Harry said in a voice as dead level as he could make it. “Kindly get to the point.”  
  
Ossy came in with a tray of ice and glasses of water. Harry was briefly startled that he hadn’t offered wine or champagne or something, but perhaps it wasn’t appropriate for the afternoon, or for days in the middle of the week, or because of some other minor point of pure-blood etiquette that Harry didn’t understand yet. Zabini picked up a glass, waited for Ossy to ladle ice and water into it, and then accepted a small sip.  
  
“I can take a great inconvenience off your hands,” Zabini said.   
  
More waiting. Harry raised his eyebrows. He was the one who looked composed and adult right now, he thought, and Zabini was the one who looked silly, unable to overcome his cultural training even when he knew it was necessary.   
  
Zabini made an irritable gesture. “Fine. I want Draco. I’ll fuck him for you, leaving you free to find another lover.”  
  
Harry stared at him until he felt as if his eyes would burn out of his head. Zabini showed no reaction this time, only sipping his drink with small motions that made the ice crack and clink against the side of the cup.  
  
Harry finally gave up on the staring and said, “Are you insane?”  
  
“That is a vulgar word, and unworthy of Draco Malfoy’s demi-husband,” Zabini said quietly, putting his glass down on the table beside him and folding his hands on his knees again. “This is one reason why it would be a kindness to both of you for you to let me share his bed. It would make your life considerably easier. It would content me. It would give Draco something he needs.”  
  
“Someone to fuck him?” Harry shook his head, not understanding. Draco had said that spouses in demi-marriages often had partners outside the marriage, but Harry had assumed they chose them themselves and were discreet about it. Someone offering to come fuck Draco was—unimaginable. “Yes, you’re insane.”  
  
“He needs someone to want him,” Zabini said. “You might make a good enough husband on the protection aspects, and you’re already building up the prestige of his family. But Draco is a prize all by himself, without the mere value that his name implies. He doesn’t need someone to stand by his side with his lip curled and never remind him how beautiful he is.”  
  
Harry did some more staring. This time, Zabini really had reached the end of his words, it seemed. He sat there, with his cool and bright eyes, his dark skin and hair and implacability, and waited for Harry to say something to it.  
  
Harry took the only course he could. “It’s not my decision. It’s Draco’s.”  
  
Zabini frowned for the first time. “Of course. But you are likely to prove the greater obstacle. Everyone knows how much Gryffindors value faithfulness. You would insist on at least the appearance of fidelity, or you would shake him off and walk away no matter what he offered you.”  
  
Harry wondered for a moment why Zabini thought Draco was bribing him to stay in the demi-marriage, when he understood that Harry had entered it out of guilt. But anything Zabini didn’t know was a potential strength, so he didn’t say that. “If you’re going to be his lover, you’ll need to be discreet anyway. The appearance of fidelity would be preserved.”  
  
Zabini sat up. “You will make me wait on your decision?”  
  
“It’s not my decision,” Harry repeated. “It’s Draco’s.” He was viciously pleased with the way that Zabini stood up at that and turned towards the back of the room, pacing a single step away before he whirled around to face Harry again. Harry made a motion towards his wand. If Zabini thought to use the Imperius Curse or another spell to convince him, then he would find Harry ready to counter him.  
  
But Zabini only stood scanning Harry’s face raptly, as if he could understand something under the surface by prolonged gazing. Harry continued to sit down, and was able to meet Zabini’s gaze serenely now. He really didn’t understand what was so hard about this. If Zabini knew the way things usually worked, why not just wait and approach Draco when he was better? He was the one who was all about tradition, or should be. Harry was the one who could sit back and just wait for other people to choose.  
  
He didn’t  _want_ Draco to choose Zabini. Harry distrusted the bastard and his cryptic comments and his little smiles. But if Draco wanted to sleep with him…  
  
Harry didn’t clutch the arms of the chair only because he knew Zabini would see that and probably guess what it meant.  _It’s his choice. And he won’t have any sex in the marriage otherwise. No sex for five years would probably be pretty tough for him._  
  
“I’ll go for now,” Zabini said, pitching his voice in such a way that Harry wanted to rip something. “But I’ll speak to Draco. He won’t thank you for keeping me from him. Why would you think that he would want someone who understands  _nothing_ of the way that our lives work, that our world works?”  
  
“I wouldn’t think that,” Harry replied, startled into responding despite himself. “What I think is that he deserves to make his own choice.”  
  
Zabini went on staring, and then he turned and walked to the Floo. He waited with his face averted until Harry opened the fireplace, and then he went through without a glance back, a word, a gesture. The Floo shut silently behind him.  
  
Harry shook his head and shut his eyes. Then he opened them, because Ossy had appeared in front of him, holding the tray with the glasses of ice and the carafes of water. Harry started to thank him, but Ossy said, “Master Harry is not being sick.”  
  
 _Maybe he means in contrast to Zabini._ Harry found a wan smile from somewhere. “Thank you, Ossy. Is Draco awake?”  
  
Ossy considered him for a long moment with his head on one side, as though he was considering saying something else. Then he nodded and said, “Master Draco Malfoy is being awake and irritable.”  
  
 _That’s a state of nature for him,_ Harry thought, but he didn’t say it because it wouldn’t have been fair. He wasn’t feeling fair, he was feeling tired and like there was yet another challenge they had to deal with, and thus yet another opportunity for him and Draco to get into an argument, but he still had to tell Draco. Keeping it from him was so much less than fair that it made Harry wince to think of it. It would take Draco’s choice away.  
  
“I’ll be right up,” he said, and made sure the Floo was tightly closed before he began to climb.  
  
*  
  
Draco flexed his back the way he would if he was lifting something heavy on his shoulders and took a deep breath, then nodded. Yes, his wound had mostly healed. He wouldn’t have been able to do that yesterday.  
  
Now to convince Ossy and Harry that they didn’t have to keep him flat on his stomach in bed.  
  
He looked up sharply as the door opened and Harry entered. “Ossy told me that we had a visitor,” he said. “Who was it?”  
  
“Blaise Zabini.” Harry pronounced the name with exquisite care, and took his place in the chair beside Draco’s bed with the same care, never looking away from Draco’s face, as though he wanted Draco to understand that he was telling him everything. “He said that he had a bargain for us. He wants to sleep with you, and that way you could have a lover. As long as I didn’t make a scene about it. And I don’t plan to.”  
  
Draco stared at him for some time. It sounded as though Harry had sold him to Blaise, which was—  
  
 _Stupid._ For one thing, the Harry who would have done such a thing wasn’t the Harry who had looked at Draco with challenging eyes the other day, or the Harry who had sliced his own arm in front of the Healers to force a treatment.  
  
“So,” he said, leaning back and folding his hands in his lap, “you think that I would consent to be his lover?”  
  
Harry blinked. “I told him it had to be your choice. He wanted me to agree without saying that. I don’t know why it was so important to him, but it was. He told me that he would come back and speak with you, and he implied that you would agree.”  
  
Draco smiled without mirth. “Why did it seem to you that it had to be my choice?”  
  
Harry’s eyes flared, and the last trace of the careful mask cracked and fell away. “Are you  _kidding?_ Because it’s  _your_ choice, of course! It’s not like Zabini could just march in here and fuck you without your consent, is it?” Draco winced at the crudity of the language, but Harry, on a passionate high, didn’t seem to notice. “But he acted like it was  _my_ choice, like as long as I didn’t make a  _fuss_ everything was fine! Well, he can sod off. If you want to do this, go ahead and do this, but Blaise bloody Zabini is not going to waltz in here and think my agreement is all he needs!”  
  
Draco swallowed. Then he said, “I have no wish to be Blaise Zabini’s lover.”  
  
Harry fell back in his chair and stared at him. “Oh,” he said. Then he frowned. “I thought you might not want him, but you’re going to want someone, because being high and dry for five years would be hard on you. Is there someone you’d prefer?”  
  
Draco checked his impatient sigh. “The more important thing is to find out why Blaise approached me—or you—in the first place. I’ve never encouraged him, and in fact, I had no idea that he desired me. What did he say about wanting me as a lover?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “That you needed someone who understood the pure-blood way of life, someone who would be for you what I couldn’t.”  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes. “That was all?” From what he knew of Blaise, that was not only more blatant but less sophisticated than he tended to be. On the other hand, he might have thought that no other appeal would work with Harry.  
  
“Pretty much,” Harry said. “He was mostly frustrated that I wouldn’t just agree, and he stomped out threatening to be back.” He snorted. “As though I would stand in your way if you wanted it. But he acted as though I might.”  
  
Draco shook his head and set his fingers to his temple for a moment. “I’m going to have to talk to him myself,” he said. “Something isn’t right here.”  
  
“I agree.”  
  
Draco looked up, ready to snap that  _some_ people found him desirable, whether or not Harry did, but stopped at the sight of Harry’s bright eyes. Harry was frowning, but he didn’t look as though he was mocking Draco or downplaying his suspicions, and at the moment, that was all Draco wanted. He leaned tamely back against his pillow, and waited.  
  
“I think,” Harry said, scowling at nothing, “that this might have a connection with our enemies. Or at least it could prove a distraction for them to use against us. If word leaks out that Zabini is courting you, then one of the other pure-bloods might start a rumor that, oh, I don’t know, I’m not the best demi-husband for you, or something. The last thing we need to do right now is give them arrows.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “If you’re suggesting I accept Blaise simply to avoid a scandal, Harry, then you haven’t learned after all from the books and the lessons that I’ve tried to teach you.”  
  
“I’ve learned from life, and that’s more than enough,” Harry said, and his smile turned sharp. “I’m tired of being on the defensive, of just having to  _wait_ until one of our enemies makes a move, or the Healers publish an article, or Zabini starts spreading gossip. I want to do something. Go on the offensive. Carry the battle to them.”  
  
Draco frowned and shook his head. “We cannot do much else until we know who our enemies are. As for waiting on the Healers, that was advice that Granger herself gave you. Are you saying that we should have done something else instead?”  
  
“No,” Harry said, slowly, as though he was testing the waters. “Perhaps not then. But now? The article is out. We know. And we know where the threat is coming from, with Zabini, and we know that we have an enemy who wants to strike at you in the middle of parties, and one who has the resources to send mercenaries and dragons after us.” Draco breathed a little more easily. Harry had figured out for himself that there were two enemies, then. “I’d like to do something else,” Harry said, and his eyes fastened on Draco’s face. “Set up an illusion. If that’s agreeable to you.”  
  
Draco spread his hands. “You are the one who would have to cast any glamour charms.” He didn’t look at his basilisk wand, lying on the table, but he was sure that he could feel it smugly laughing at him.  
  
“Not that kind of illusion,” Harry said quietly, and the light in his eyes was almost gentle. “An illusion based on our actions and words.” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “The illusion that there  _is_ something more to this demi-marriage than a sense of my guilt and your needing my money.”  
  
“Isn’t there already?” Draco met Harry’s gaze, and held it. He decided that healing potions were probably behind his unusual courage, but the words were out, spoken, and if they might help, then so be it.  
  
*  
  
 _Well, shit, anyway._  
  
Because when Draco was looking at him like that, Harry had very little choice but to remember the way his hands had wanted to strangle the chair when Zabini announced that he was interested in Draco, and he had to remember the way Draco had taught him to dance, and he had to remember the fork Draco had thrown at him and the declaration he had made about wanting more passion at the table.  
  
It wasn’t that Harry was in love. He would have recognized that ridiculous, heady feeling from his time with Ginny. But he was more interested and invested than he would be if there was only polite cooperation between them.   
  
So he swallowed, and met Draco’s eyes, and said, “Yes. I think there is.”  
  
When Draco smiled, he looked as Harry had seen him look with his Slytherin friends the couple of times he’d spied on him. He nodded and clasped Harry’s hand strongly, his fingers exploring up to his wrist. When Harry caught his breath—well, the touch felt good—his smile twisted a little. “You shouldn’t have trouble playing a part, then. I notice you act best when you feel something.”  
  
Harry half-shrugged, and tried to take his hand back. Draco wouldn’t let it go. Harry raised his eyebrows and let his hand lie on the coverlet as if that had been his idea all along. Draco’s half-laugh, his softly gleaming eyes, said that he knew the truth, but that wasn’t as irritating as Harry would have assumed it was. “Yeah, I do,” Harry said. “Which made it hard to conceal my irritation at some of the Ministry parties.”  
  
Draco sat up. “Well, you’ve displayed  _something_ at this latest party, anyway. Even without this illusion, I think some people would assume you care for me, with the way that you hauled me out of the party rather than let me stay and embarrass myself.”  
  
Harry blinked. “I thought they would just assume that I didn’t want to embarrass the family.”  
  
“To do that, they would have to believe that you cared about the Malfoys’ reputation,” Draco said. “And I doubt they do.”  
  
“Do  _you_?”  
  
Draco, put on the spot, reacted more gracefully than Harry thought he had, without a blush roasting his cheeks, and he didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question, either. He met Harry’s eyes and said, “Yes, I think that you care about it. Not in the same way I do, but that can come later.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “And you don’t care anymore if I never value it in exactly the same way that you do.”  
  
“No,” Draco said. “I want—this is what I would have said the other night, if I’d had better control over my temper—I want a working marriage. We’re good in public. I want us to be good in private, too, Harry. Share our concerns, even if they don’t have to do directly with the family. I won’t be a spoiled little prince, and I don’t want you to be a mindless automaton. Complain, if you want to. Ask for what you want to.” He smiled abruptly. “It doesn’t mean I’ll always give it to you, mind.”  
  
Harry laughed. “That makes you no different from a lot of the other people in my life, including my friends.”  
  
He hadn’t expected the way Draco’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, Harry thought he was going to talk about something different, but instead he said, “You agree?”  
  
“I do.” Harry shook the hand that held his.  
  
*  
  
 _I shall have to see if I can distinguish myself from those others by what I_ can  _give._


	22. A United Facade

“You’re sure about this?”  
  
Harry looked up with a small smile, shaking his head. “It’s only going to the Ministry, where I’ve been a hundred times before. I’ll be fine.” He brushed one hand along Draco’s arm in silent question.  
  
Draco straightened up and nodded to him, a bit offended that Harry would think  _he_ was the one who needed comfort. They both wore their best robes, dark blue for Harry, the ones that Ossy had chosen for him, and silver-grey for Draco. They didn’t flatter him as some other colors might have, but the richness of the material and the thick lace that clung to the cuffs was more important than that. Draco knew other wizards would look on the robes and see them as a declaration of war.  
  
And even more than that, someone might betray surprise at the way they would walk together, and that would be worth appearing less than his best.  
  
“It’s not like other times that you’ve been in the Ministry, and you know it,” he said back, quietly. “Plus, we know we have enemies with access there, given the way I was stabbed during the party. I want to know if you’re  _sure_.”  
  
Harry considered the question with the gravity that Draco had wanted, which satisfied him. For a moment, his eyes narrowed, and he reached out one hand as though for the support of a table that wasn’t there. Draco moved his arm under Harry’s palm instead, to practice the naturalness of the gesture, and felt the enormous heat beating and burning through his hand.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said at last, in a voice so determined Draco could imagine his enemies running away from the mere sound of it. “I am. I don’t see any other way to flush our enemies into the open, and I told you last night how sick I was of sitting and waiting for them to come to us.” He grinned at Draco. “And I can’t wait to see the look on Zabini’s face.”  
  
Draco smiled back. He had composed a letter to Blaise last night, on the ponciest parchment he could find, picking and choosing his words with care. Blaise had to think he was desperate for the sex Blaise offered, but trying not to  _appear_ desperate. Draco had had long training in pretending things he didn’t believe, but it wasn’t every day that he did it in writing, up against someone who had known him from a child and had much the same training.  
  
The date was set for today, though, for an imaginary “clandestine” meeting at the Ministry with Blaise later in the afternoon. Instead, Draco would go in earlier with Harry, and they would start the first phase of their campaign. The meeting with Blaise would be the second.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked, pausing and lowering his voice as though they were already in the Ministry rather than the entrance hall of the Manor. “You’re frowning.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I am looking forward to this,” he murmured. “With—intense anticipation.” In reality, he didn’t know if those were the right words for the feeling that coursed through him, that made his heart thrum almost hard enough to take him off his feet. It had been flowing like a buried river under other emotions, and now it was there, on the surface, where he was incapable of ignoring it.  
  
“Well,” Harry said, with a small shrug, “we’re taking the offensive against our enemies. I feel better about it, too.”  
  
Draco bit his tongue to avoid saying something he wouldn’t mean, that was meant only to curry favor with Harry. Or something he was not certain he meant, perhaps, but something that was with him and in him every time he looked sideways at Harry, or watched the way he bit his lip when he was thinking about something else.  
  
 _I am with him._  
  
The “with” seemed to ring in his mind, and he was so quiet during the Apparition that Harry asked if he was feeling well when they landed outside the Ministry. Draco smiled at him. “Feeling thoughtful,” he said, and left it at that.  
  
*  
  
Harry straightened his back as he strode into the Ministry. This  _was_ different. Most of the time, he walked into this place wearing his Auror robes as a shield, and used that to deflect some of the blows that he knew would come at him otherwise.  
  
This time, it rather felt to him as if his shield rode his left arm.  
  
They attracted stares, but most of the first ones seemed befuddled, as if the people looking at them had no idea what would happen and wanted them to be someone else’s problem. Harry didn’t feel the need to look around, even to check if there were wands pointed at them, which was a refreshing change. His task was to stride along in a dignified way with Draco beside him, and he did it.  
  
Finally, when they had crossed the entirety of the Atrium from the doors to the Fountain of Magical Brethren, someone did step in front of them. Harry stopped and gave her a formal nod. She was nice enough, Georgina Eliot, although she sometimes pried into things that were none of her business.  
  
“Auror Potter,” Eliot said, giving him the same kind of nod back. Draco stiffened, and Harry wondered if it was at the lack of an equivalent title for him. “It is good to see you back. How long do you plan to stay?” She looked at Malfoy for the first time, and Harry saw her hands almost itching for her wand.  
  
“We have someone to see up in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Harry said. They didn’t, in reality, but there was something they did need to do. Harry and Draco were just going to get as much gossip out of it as possible. “A private matter.” He stressed the word “private” enough to make Eliot stare and a few more heads turn around the Atrium.  
  
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” Eliot said. She had thick, curly dark hair, and she twined one curl around her finger as she watched them thoughtfully.  
  
“Serious? In what sense?” Harry leaned towards her but raised his voice, as though he had forgotten other people were listening. “I can assure you that I take my marriage very seriously.”  
  
Eliot dropped her hand and took a step back. “But it’s only a demi-marriage,” she said. “Most of the time, those are contracted for convenience only. The last I heard, you were straight.”  
  
Harry half-grimaced .Most of the time, he found Eliot refreshing when so many of the Aurors around her were uptight and interfering, but that kind of thing really could go too far, he thought.  
  
“It’s a demi-marriage with  _me_ ,” Draco said, and leaned his cheek for a moment on Harry’s shoulder. His skin burned through the cloth. “That means that it’s more serious than it would be if it was with someone else.”  
  
Eliot gaped this time. Before she could do more than splutter, Harry said, “Come, dear,” in Draco’s ear and led him along. Draco grinned at him as they went, and Harry thought it really could look to someone else like an adoring, besotted smile, instead of the smirk it was.  
  
As they stepped into the lifts, Harry said from the corner of his mouth, “You didn’t tell me you were going to do that.”  
  
“You didn’t tell  _me_ that we were going to meet someone so annoying.”  
  
Harry had to pause at that, but in the end he admitted it was fair.  
  
And they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. All the eyes in the Atrium were staring at them; the voices hummed and swarmed and talked about them, and Harry knew there would be more tales spreading, people trying to interpret what he and Draco were doing from their eyes and the way they stood and their hands, and thinking they knew. He shuddered a little, but kept a smile on his lips. Incredible to think that he had to welcome now what he had always hated.  
  
But this was important. This was for him and Draco to have a working marriage, and that made it more important than anything else.  
  
 _Well, just as important as Ron and Hermione, anyway._ That was what he had promised, and although  _that_ sometimes seemed strange to him, too, he had made the promise and would try to live up to it. It wasn’t as though either his friends or the demi-marriage were going to go away tomorrow.  
  
They took the lifts up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and passed in silence down the main corridor, and towards the door at the far end that led to the Ministry Archives. There was no one in front of them all that way, and then there was. A tall woman in a grey cloak stepped out of her office and bowed to them.  
  
“Are you seeking knowledge, gentlemen?”  
  
Harry had never been sure what to make of Elana Twine, whom the Minister had appointed Keeper of the Archives not long after he took office. Sometimes she seemed not to notice anything, such as the way her eyes looked at Draco without flinching, and sometimes she seemed to know everything. Hermione had met her and said she was so devoted to knowledge that she couldn’t imagine keeping it from anyone else, which Harry suspected was the best explanation.  
  
“We are,” Harry said. “And we seek to copy a certain record.” He looked at the closed door, which was made of stone and had a carving in the center of it that changed every time a new Keeper of the Archives took office. Twine had chosen to make it a rearing, roaring lion with the world clasped in its paws. Harry had no idea why. He didn’t think Twine had been a Gryffindor.  
  
“Then you shall,” Twine said. “Provided that the record belongs to you, and not to anyone else.”  
  
“It belongs to both of us,” Draco said. “We need no more justification than that.”  
  
Twine smiled at him. Draco took a cautious step back. Harry snorted and squeezed Draco’s hand in apology. He’d forgotten to warn him about Twine, who was always an experience. “Indeed, you don’t.” She turned and waved her wand in the intricate gesture of the opening spell that only the Keeper of the Archives learned. Harry saw Draco watching her intently, and shook his head. He wouldn’t learn the spell without also knowing the nonverbal commands behind it.  
  
The door opened, and Twine moved out of their way, back into her office. Draco studied her back with narrowed eyes, but Harry shook his head. “She won’t have anything to do with the parties against us,” he said quietly, as they stepped into the gently musty confines of the Archive. “Some people tried to bribe her when she first took office. She didn’t know what they were talking about, and she hasn’t responded to any offers since then, either.”  
  
“She could dislike me,” Draco said. “Or Death Eaters.”  
  
“Did she  _look_ as though she did?”  
  
Draco paused and thought about that. Then he said, “No.” His voice rang with reluctance. Harry smiled. He knew that Draco prided himself as a good reader and judge of character, which meant that someone couldn’t  _possibly_ be against them if Draco had seen them and decided they weren’t.  
  
 _Maybe someday, he’ll trust my judgment as much._  
  
Harry had to acknowledge that he hadn’t done a lot that would cause Draco to think he was stable and trustworthy, though. Their recent agreement was the first thing that had made Draco look at him with a different light in his eyes.  
  
 _And you’re ridiculous if you think that you can read his emotions from this “light in his eyes” nonsense._  
  
They took a couple of steps further into the Archives, and Draco made a surprised sound deep in his throat. Harry tilted his head back, and sucked in a breath through his nostrils, ignoring it when he started coughing and Draco snickered. Yes, there was a lot of dust here, but Twine took care of anything that could damage the books and other records stored in this room. And there was something soothing about studying or being here that the rest of his experiences at the Ministry really couldn’t match.  
  
The bookshelves loomed above them, all the way to the arched and domed ceiling, which had stained-glass enchanted windows set around it. They gave (false, of course) visions of magical sunlight that Harry knew had probably been enchanted in turn not to fade any ink. The place was quiet and rich with silence, though here and there a quill scratched as some researcher or Ministry employee worked with the information.  
  
“I’ve never been here before.”  
  
Harry glanced at Draco and smiled a bit. “Haven’t you? I suppose I thought that you might want to see the documents that confirmed your pure-blood heritage.”  
  
Draco gave him a quick glance, and then seemed to relax as he realized Harry wasn’t mocking him. “We know our heritage in different ways,” he said, and laid a hand over his heart. “We don’t need documents to confirm that I’m the Malfoy heir or that my mother is married to my father, though of course it’s nice to know they’re here in case someone else ever challenges those things. We know it already.”  
  
Harry swallowed. An unexpected, aching void had opened up in him at Draco’s words. He wondered what it would have been like to go through life with that unshaken certainty, to know that you  _belonged_ somewhere and there were papers you could produce to back up your claim if you had to.  
  
 _Well, parchments._  
  
But his tendency to try and undermine the silly things he was feeling didn’t work this time. He felt as if he wanted to spread nonexistent wings and soar out of the room, flying until he found a place where he  _did_ belong, where there were people like him and people who looked like him. The Weasleys were family, and Harry had accepted long ago that he would never have any relatives except the ones he had chosen, but—  
  
“Come on.”  
  
Draco shook his arm. Harry nodded quickly and followed him down the aisles towards the documents they’d come to see. He reckoned this was belonging of a sort.   
  
 _Although the demi-marriage will only last for five years, and after that, my choice is going to be limited to people who can accept both my reputation and the Malfoy name. Which will be pretty bloody limited._  
  
Harry sighed. He wondered for a moment if Hermione had foreseen that he would want this sort of thing someday, and that was the real reason she had objected to him marrying Draco. Then he shook his head. How could she know he had wanted it, when he hadn’t had the first idea himself?  
  
*  
  
Draco had noticed the moment that Harry’s breath caught, the way his pace faltered for a moment before he followed, but he kept his own head turned straight on and his steps stately. By the time Harry caught up with Draco, his face was calm and he looked up at the shelves around them, with the spines of books and the cases of scrolls and the locked lead boxes of more sensitive materials showing, with the same emotions Draco had seen on his face when they first walked into the room.  
  
But Draco retained the memory of his expression anyway. It was, literally, the expression of memory for him—the way Harry had looked at his dead family in the Forbidden Forest, during the memory Draco had seen in the demi-marriage ritual.  
  
He wondered what thought, exactly, had crossed Harry’s mind, but he thought he could guess. He couldn’t  _do_ anything about it in the long run, but the next five years might be easier if they got along.  
  
For that reason, he kept his hand locked firmly on Harry’s arm as they crossed the floor of the Archives. Harry would know that someone stood with him, for what good the knowledge could do. And Draco would do something more if he had an idea, or if Harry requested anything.  
  
They finally reached the section at the back of the Archive where the records of slightly less common pure-blood procedures were kept: adoptions, arranged inheritances that went to people not related by blood or only distantly related, and demi-marriages. Harry blinked as he looked at the boxes, and Draco nodded.  
  
“It’s true,” he said. “The Ministry really doesn’t throw anything away, and our families are older than anyone else in the wizarding world.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes but said nothing as he looked for the Malfoy records. Draco already knew the general section, and a moment’s staring rewarded him. A glittering wooden box sat at the top of the shelves, looking newly dusted. Of course, the Keeper of the Archives would have come to look at the records when a ward warned her of the arrival of a new document.   
  
“There,” he said, and Harry floated the box down to them and they opened it together. The wood of the box was the soft dusty red color of cherry, but weathered and old, and glittered only because someone had made an effort to polish it up.  
  
Inside lay parchments, some single—those were for the uncomplicated demi-marriages that ended with a simple annulment or the death of one partner—and some thick sheaves bound with ribbons, for the demi-marriages that had become true marriages, or that had become involved in inheritance machinations later on. Draco shot a swift glance at Harry, but he only looked interested in the parchment on top of the stack, not the rest.  
  
 _I can’t interest him in Malfoy history, yet. Perhaps later._  
  
“I wonder if the Potters have a box?” Harry asked, as if talking to himself. In fact, Draco wasn’t entirely sure that he had been meant to hear it.  
  
Draco smiled at him. “I’m sure they do,” he said. “Do you want to go look for it while I make a copy of our demi-marriage record?”  
  
Harry hesitated. His eyelids trembled for a moment, as though he was fighting his way up from a nightmare. Then he said, “I wouldn’t have any idea where to look, or what it looks like. I—I’ve never been in this part of the Archive before.”  
  
“I know that,” Draco said, and forbore to point out that it was obvious in everything Harry said and did. “But you should still go and look, if you want. I want you to feel that you can still know your birth family, not that you’re completely cut off from them by marrying into the Malfoys.”  
  
Harry frowned a little, and Draco thought he would say that he thought the demi-marriage  _was_ meant to cut him off by taking away his name. But instead, he nodded and said, “I’ll go do that.” He turned away and picked his way across the floor as though he thought the shelves would tremble and fall over if he stepped too heavily.  
  
Draco smiled and unrolled the record of the demi-marriage. Yes, there it was, in the thick silver ink that the Ministry used for all records like this, relying on the same magic that inked the names of new pupils into the Hogwarts book. The minute a pure-blood family or heir changed their status by official ritual, the record would come into existence, or update itself if it already existed.  
  
 _Harry POTTER becomes this day Harry MALFOY in demi-marriage to Draco MALFOY, for the term of five years._  
  
There were other lines, setting forth what would happen if they annulled the marriage in five years, and how Harry’s children would bear the Malfoy name and could be considered heirs to the Manor if Draco never married or left no heirs, and how Harry was currently Draco’s heir. Draco set himself to carefully copying it down. This was why they had come here, and this was what they would walk out of here bearing, to start the first step in the dance that would proclaim they took their demi-marriage seriously.  
  
Draco took a sharp little breath. No other Malfoy had ever published the news or notice of his demi-marriage like this. It was a step he hadn’t thought he was prepared to take until Harry and he had talked yesterday. Some documents were meant to be private.  
  
But, in truth, how private were they, when officials like the Keeper of the Archives had the power to walk in here and look them up when they wanted? They said the boxes were warded, and the old pure-blood families had put protective spells on them, but it was too much to deny access to them to  _everyone_ who wasn’t a Malfoy. That would prevent the documents from being used to settle inheritance disputes and the like.  
  
 _Or to prove to the doubters that Harry and other people like him are Malfoys._  
  
He worked in silence, producing a document that was as close to the original as possible, although in black ink rather than silver. Only when he sat back with a stretch and shake of his cramped hand did it occur to him that Harry had been gone rather a long time. He looked cautiously around.  
  
Harry sat near him, on a stool at a different table. He was quiet, and there was no box in front of him.  
  
Draco stood up and walked over to him, standing at his shoulder. He would say nothing, but he would offer his comfort and his calm and his presence, and see if together they inspired Harry to talk.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and lifted his head. “The spells on the box won’t let me access it,” he whispered. “When I tried, I got this message that says—that says the last heir of the Potter line is gone, and that no one except someone who’s Potter by blood can touch it.”  
  
Draco shook his head quickly. “There may have been protective spells like that, but the Keeper of the Archives has to be able to get into it if possible. Why don’t you ask Twine?’  
  
Harry turned around on the stool and looked up at him. His eyes were dull and sick. Draco squeezed down hard on his shoulder, and waited.  
  
“That was the first message,” Harry whispered. “When the second appeared, it said that no one who was a member of a family who had hurt the Potters in the last hundred years would have access to those documents. The Keeper of the Archives might touch them, but for everyone else—it said they ‘would be as dust and ashes.’” Harry closed his eyes. “A Malfoy and a Potter must have feuded, although I never knew that.”  
  
Draco squirmed uncomfortably. He did remember Lucius’s story about his grandfather Abraxas winning something important in a bet from Charlus Potter, but he wouldn’t have thought that would affect the conditions placed on the box.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, smoothing his hand up and down Harry’s arm. “Although I realize that probably doesn’t sound like much, right now, compared to what you’ve lost.”  
  
Harry bowed his head and said nothing for some time. Then he lifted his head and shook it.  
  
“I went my entire childhood until I came to Hogwarts without even knowing what my parents looked like,” he said harshly. “I heard all these stories about them during school, but that’s all they were—stories. I only saw them a few times, really  _saw_ them. They’re photographs and memories.”  
  
He met Draco’s eyes evenly. “I entered into this marriage of my own free will. I’m not going to be stupid enough to blame you for a loss I didn’t even know I was experiencing until now.” He stood up and tucked his hand through Draco’s arm. “Come on.”  
  
By the time they reached the door out of the Archives, Harry’s face was calm again. He was sliding back into the role they needed to play to convince the others they were happy in the demi-marriage, Draco thought, and he was the only one who would see that it was a little bit less enthusiastic than before.  
  
He tightened his hold on Harry’s arm, and Harry smiled at him.  
  
Draco couldn’t give Harry money or freedom from guilt or even entire safety, not with the enemies after them. But he could, and he would, try to give him a family. The way was open, and the method suggested itself to him after a bit of thought.  
  
Harry was a Malfoy now. And Malfoys stood by each other.


	23. Uncladestine

[](http://lomonaaeren.livejournal.com/516358.html)  
“How do you want to play this?”  
  
Harry’s voice was soft in his ear. Draco studied the corridor in front of them instead of answering. It was one of those places the Ministry had left behind as it grew, moving its employees into larger offices and half-thinking it would use the empty rooms for storage. Some of them did have furniture in them, or dusty piles of paper, but none of them ever quite ascended to the majesty that the name of “storage room” would imply. Lucius had told Draco about them when he was young, saying they were a closely-guarded secret of the Malfoy family, but like so much else his father had told Draco, that had turned out to be a load of bollocks.  
  
“Draco?”  
  
Draco jerked himself back to the present and nodded at Harry. “I told Blaise I would meet him here. I think it might be best for me to go in first, so that he thinks I’ve genuinely come alone.”  
  
Harry turned his head to the side, biting his lip. Draco had once hated the openness of his face; it had seemed to him that someone who was a public figure should have better control of his emotions. Just now, he blessed it. It let him see concern in Harry’s eyes he would never have found out otherwise. “All right, but be careful.”  
  
Draco smiled. “Blaise wants to fuck me, not hurt me.”  
  
“Are you sure about that?” Harry’s eyes looked as they had when he’d first told Draco about Blaise’s visit. “It seems to me that his desire, assuming it’s real, could turn into the desire to hurt you if you refuse him.”  
  
Draco shook his head briskly. “Of course it’s not real. There’s no reason for him to want me. He would have hinted at it before now, if he meant it.”  
  
Then he paused. Some memories of those chess games at Hogwarts came back to him, and the way that Blaise had sometimes sat by the fire with his arms folded, watching Draco as if he was the center of the room. Well, at the time, he  _had_ been, with his father the richest and most influential of the pure-bloods. It only made sense that Blaise would watch him if he wanted to keep up on Slytherin gossip.  
  
“Remembered something?” Harry’s voice was gentle.  
  
Draco glared at him. “You needn’t sound patronizing.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I was trying to speak with a voice of understanding. There are some people I found out later worshipped and adored me who I thought at the time were only a bit awkward and bumbling about saying thanks.”  
  
Draco paused. He hadn’t heard any rumors about fallings-out with any of Harry’s friends, and in fact, it was probably someone outside the Weasleys, which made it less fascinating, but also more likely that it was someone Draco might currently know. “Who?”  
  
Harry blushed. “I don’t intend to name names,” he said, and abruptly his attention snapped down the corridor, over Draco’s shoulder. “It looks like it’s your chance to act in front of a friend. Here he comes.”  
  
Draco was glad of the Disillusionment Charm that Harry immediately cast over himself. It was fast and skillful, and that made Blaise considerably less likely to notice it. He stepped out in front of Harry with his chin lifted, just in case.  
  
Blaise stood in the middle of the corridor, considering the closed offices as if he wondered which one of them was most likely to house Draco. He turned around and smiled when he saw him. “Draco,” he whispered.  
  
Draco had to pause again. Blaise was doing a better job of acting himself than Draco had prophesied he would. Blaise’s eyes had a gentle shine behind them, and he smiled the way Draco had only seen him smile before at victories, or the news that his mother was taking a new husband.  
  
 _He might have inherited some of her tendencies._  
  
It had never been a concern before, since Blaise showed no sign of wanting to get married. Now, Draco resisted the temptation to check Blaise’s hands for signs of poison and nodded politely to him. “I understand that you recently had a conversation with my demi-husband and requested permission to address me yourself, Blaise.”  
  
“I wouldn’t say that it was so much requesting permission as being denied anything else,” Blaise said, and shook his head. “I don’t understand Potter. I thought he would leap at the chance to have someone else entertain you, and he reacted as though I’d tried to kill his best friends.”  
  
 _No, he didn’t,_ Draco thought, remembering a bit of the war, and some of what had come before it.  _His reaction would have been much more violent if you had._  
  
But Blaise had known some of the ways that Harry behaved before, by rumor if he hadn’t interacted with Harry directly. Perhaps he had made the comparison wisely. Draco wished now he could have been present at that conversation.  
  
“Potter doesn’t understand a lot of the way demi-marriages work,” Draco said. He kept his voice low and conciliatory. “But I’m sure that he didn’t exactly tell me the truth about what you said, either. Half of our kind of truth is contained in nuance, and if he doesn’t understand the proprieties, why should we think that he would understand  _that_?”  
  
Blaise’s eyes shone again. “Well said, Draco.  _Very_ well said.” He nodded. “I can’t recreate the exact set of nuances I used, not for someone who understands, but I assume Potter told you some of the truth if you agreed to meet me here. He’s too terminally honest not to, and I know he doesn’t want you for himself. So?” He held out his hands. “Shall we make this as simple as Potter thought it was? Your  _choice_? Do you want me?”  
  
Draco watched him, and waited for the trap. But it was nothing obvious, only Blaise poising there, and his gaze holding Draco’s in a way that made Draco’s cheeks heat up.  
  
 _That’s not all it is. It can’t be. But maybe there is some genuine desire mixed into whatever else it is he wants me for._  
  
Draco cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple, and I counted on you to understand that, Blaise.”  
  
Blaise sighed and dropped his hands, flowing back into a more normal position. “I thought I did. But I would like to hear you make the choice to take me as your lover, Draco. There’s too many other people who would never say it.”  
  
Draco smirked, while his mind worked furiously. “So I’m third or fourth choice, am I? You expected that to flatter me?”  
  
Blaise sighed again and made a single, graceful, complicated motion of his hands. “You’re the one who can give me what I want. Say that I considered others, but none of them had as worthy a combination of traits as you did. Is that still unflattering?”  
  
“Ah, now we come to it,” Draco said, and thought he heard a sound behind him as Harry tensed. Good. It was possible that Blaise would react more violently once Draco had discovered his true motivations. “What else do you want besides a lover, Blaise?”  
  
Blaise looked at him long and steadily. Draco waited, and finally Blaise said, “You know that my mother’s reputation isn’t the best.”  
  
Draco laughed before he could help it, which made Blaise’s mouth warp a little. But in the end, he shook his head and said, “You want someone to marry you?”  
  
“Why, yes,” Blaise said. “That would be it.”  
  
The words dried up in Draco’s mouth, and he stared at Blaise. So, it was more complicated than Harry had thought, but not as deep as Draco had envisioned, either. Blaise wanted to occupy the position Harry did, and he had thought becoming Draco’s lover was the first step to achieving that.  
  
“Why?” Draco whispered.  
  
Blaise shook his head. “You ought to know better than to ask that, Draco,” he said, as if scolding a student who had asked a stupid question. “Really, you should. My mother has left me with no real reputation, and my father is long dead. If he has family that might claim me, I’ve never met them. The war damaged everyone’s reputation. Slytherins are still looked down on in many of the professions I might have applied to, the ones that would have enhanced my status or at least guaranteed me a comfortable living. I don’t have the skills that you do in potions to fall back on. And I prefer a life of more luxury than that, anyway.” He grinned and moved closer. “I have admired you in the past, you know. The way you play chess, the way you accepted the Ministry’s sentence over your father instead of trying to challenge it. There are other things I don’t like as much, but we can work on those.”  
  
Draco fell back a step, and told himself it was all right to do that. Not only did he have Harry nearby to charge to his rescue if he needed it, but it would convince Blaise that he was scared of him, and continue the pretense until Draco had all the information he needed. “What about whether  _I_ like it?”  
  
Blaise paused and looked at him. “I know some of what you went through when you spoke to Potter about demi-marriage,” he said quietly. “I know that you’re weakened right now, or at least not as strong as you were. I can provide a strong right arm as well as Potter can. And I can give you a  _much_ better time in bed, and a spouse who already knows all the etiquette that you need me to know. Come on, Draco. Can you say that you’d rather stay married to Potter than marry someone like me, someone you’ve always known?”  
  
“I  _have_ always known you,” Draco said, while he shook his head to dispel the visions that Blaise’s words had conjured. “And that’s the problem.”  
  
Blaise sighed. “You think I would marry you and then betray you? I wouldn’t, Draco. The demi-marriage would add greatly to my own power and consequence, and I’m not stupid enough to do anything to jeopardize that over a pretty face. If I wanted to take another lover, or you did, I’d hope we could discuss the matter like mature adults.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I think you would marry me and continue to live exactly the way you just told me you would like to, using the marriage for the protection and the status it would give you. You wouldn’t care for the family the way that Malfoy demi-spouses  _have_ to do. You wouldn’t think that you owed me anything.”  
  
Blaise stared at him for a moment, then said, “I’m willing to give up my own name to take the Malfoy name. I know demi-spouses have to do that.”  
  
“But would you consider yourself a Malfoy?” Draco looked Blaise over deliberately from top to toe. He had settled now, and although, yes, he could remind himself that Harry was just around the corner, he found that he didn’t need to. He was thinking over Blaise’s proposed offer, and turning it around in his head, wondering what would have happened if he  _had_ gone to Blaise first, or one of his other Slytherin friends.  
  
But he wouldn’t trade what he had now with Harry for what Blaise could have given him, even if Blaise  _did_ do an eloquent job of explaining the advantages there. Because Blaise wouldn’t have tried to enter a working marriage with Draco the way Harry had. Harry was stubborn and absurdly self-sacrificing sometimes, but he was willing to adjust. It sounded as though Blaise simply meant to live the kind of life he’d always been accustomed to, the life he wanted, the life he thought he should have.  
  
Draco wanted to give Harry things to make up for never knowing his family and never having luxury. It sounded as though Blaise wanted only to take.  
  
“I know how marriages of convenience work,” Blaise was saying. “I would never say a word against you in public, never act against you. I know how to present a united façade.”  
  
 _The way I was doing with Harry._ But Draco knew the difference, now, between what Blaise offered and what Harry did, and he would choose Harry’s gift unhesitatingly.  
  
“You would never speak against me,” Draco said. “But you would never speak  _for_ me, either. You would never offer me more than you absolutely had to. I have someone in my life who will give me more than that.”  
  
Blaise stared at him, mouth slightly agape. Then he said, “Does that mean that you’re choosing him over me?”  
  
Draco shrugged, ignoring the way Blaise’s eyes widened. Yes, it was satisfying, but he had other things to worry about right now. “I’m saying that I’ve already chosen, and there’s nothing you can do to change my decision, Blaise. Thank you for the offer.” He smiled, taking vicious pleasure in saying it. “But no thanks.”  
  
He turned his back.  
  
Blaise said nothing for long seconds, long enough for Draco to reach the corner behind which he knew Harry stood. Then he said, “You’re depriving yourself of my strength, which could have benefited you in more than one way.”  
  
Draco glanced back at him. He thought he felt a brush on his arm from Harry, and he appreciated it, but he wouldn’t risk revealing Harry to Blaise if he didn’t have to. “What do you mean?”  
  
“People still talk to me who won’t talk to you now that you’re married to a Potter.” Blaise’s eyes flashed. “And that means I know certain things about who’s hunting you, bits of gossip you  _have_ to hear if you’re going to live.”  
  
Harry’s hand tightened on Draco’s arm. Draco gave no sign that he had noticed it. “How interesting,” he said. “I can’t give you the demi-marriage, but perhaps we can arrange another trade for those bits of gossip?”  
  
Blaise shook his head. “It’s becoming obvious that you’re not someone I can deal with, after all,” he said. “Not if you prefer wedding a  _Gryffindor_ to living the way you should.” He paused, and his face shifted in several different expressions before he settled on one that Draco could tell he had tried hard to make look pitying. “You’re not the man I thought you were, and that lessens my desire. You needn’t think I’ll lose sleep from this, or regret not marrying you.”  
  
“I already told you the same,” Draco said. “If you want to comfort yourself this way, then go ahead.”   
  
And he walked around the corner, and kept going when he felt the weight and warmth of Harry against his side. He heard Blaise curse, once, and then depart. His footsteps didn’t run, didn’t sound worried. Draco half-sighed. He would have given much to know he had inflicted the same level of worry on Blaise that Blaise had on him.  
  
“Are you all right? You’re shaking.”  
  
Draco blinked and looked to the side. Harry had removed part of the Disillusionment Charm, showing his face. Draco sighed. “I wish that could have gone better. Once, I would have managed to trick and charm the information I wanted out of Blaise.”  
  
“You’ve changed,” Harry said gently. “In who you are and what you have and what you want.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows at him. “So being married to you has changed who I am? So fast?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I didn’t mean that.” They continued walking in silence for a moment, and Draco took the chance to settle his breathing and remind himself that he was a Malfoy, and all of them—except Harry—presented an implacable face to the world. Then Harry said, “I was thinking more—since the war. And since I destroyed some of what you were by tugging on the life-debts. Zabini knows that you’re not as rich as your father, or able to give him as much. So he felt more able to bargain as an equal.”  
  
Draco nudged Harry hard in the ribs with his elbow. Harry grunted and then said, “And that was for?”  
  
“You have a good political brain when you want to use it,” Draco said distantly, looking ahead down the corridor so he didn’t have to see the expression on Harry’s face. “So don’t tell me that the politics of former Slytherins are too complicated for you to understand, again. Understand?”  
  
*  
  
Harry smiled. It said something about the way his own attitude had changed that he didn’t immediately want to murder Draco for the insult, and that he could feel the fondness behind it.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “I won’t. But in this case, I don’t think I know Zabini better than you. Just that I understand some of the things he might want because they’re similar to things the criminals I’ve arrested want.”  
  
Draco said something uncomplimentary under his breath, and then they rounded a corner and were back in the more public area of the Ministry. Harry immediately lengthened his stride so that they were close together and offered his arm. Draco’s mouth quirked as he accepted it, but Harry never knew what he would have said.  
  
They had an audience.  
  
Eliot had gone and told other Aurors, it seemed, who had told still others. A solid wall of scarlet robes faced Harry and Draco as they stopped. Eliot was in front with her wand held between her hands as if it was a wall all by itself, but others crowded forwards around her, eager to know what would happen.   
  
“Fellow Aurors,” Harry said, and felt a tremor run through Draco. Well, if he was afraid, Harry wouldn’t hesitate to protect him. “Did you want something?”  
  
Eliot looked around, as though waiting for someone else to step forwards, and then sighed and spoke when no one else would take up the mantle. “We’re worried about you, Auror Potter—”  
  
“Malfoy,” Harry interrupted, because Draco seemed to have stopped breathing against his side, and that was never a good thing. “My name is Malfoy now.”  
  
Eliot stared at him, then said, “If we have to. Auror  _Malfoy,_ we worry that you will place your loyalty to your new family above your work. You’ve already taken weeks off work, when you never took this long a holiday before. Are you coming back? Can we depend on you?”  
  
“How many of you are members of prominent pure-blood families?” Harry asked, looking around in interest. “Greengrass, yes, and Moonsweep, and I think you’re at least  _related_ to the Rosiers, right, Candlebright? And none of them are accused of putting loyalties to their families over their jobs.” He stabbed Eliot with his eyes, and had the satisfaction of seeing her take a step back. “I’m not going to be fucking bloody condescended to by you, Auror Eliot. I’ll come back in my own time, when I’ve settled into my new family, and you don’t get to dictate my feelings or worry about what I’ll do in regards to my job until you actually see me do it.”  
  
“Will you really come back, then?” Eliot’s eyes were shadowed. “Because when you talk about that, your dearest demi-husband looks as if he’s bitten into a sour apple.”  
  
Harry turned and narrowed his eyes at Draco. Draco narrowed them right back, and leaned harder on Harry’s arm, as if to remind him that they didn’t want to quarrel in front of others. But over something like this, Harry was willing to quarrel.  
  
“You want me to come back to my job eventually,” he said. “You know that it won’t be good to keep me cooped up in the Manor.” He hoped that Draco understood both the warning and the friendliness in his voice, and how both of them could exist without comprising the other.  
  
Draco stared at him and then up into his face, and said, “You know that you’re my heir.”  
  
“Yes, that  _is_ rather covered under the tenets of the demi-marriage,” Harry said, and reached to produce the scroll that they had come into the Ministry to copy. He thought this the prime time to display it. But Draco seized his arm and held him still until Harry reluctantly turned his attention back to him.  
  
“And the Malfoy heir shouldn’t be putting his life in danger,” Draco said.  
  
Harry snarled before he thought about it. His lips pulled back from his teeth, he put an impressive amount of sound behind it, and Draco cowered a little before it. But Harry reminded himself an instant later that this was his spouse he was dealing with, not a criminal, and making him cower would be bad in the long run. Harry tried to smile instead. “The Malfoy heir puts his life in danger all the time,” he said. “With political intrigues, and attacks from enemies, it’s a wonder most of your ancestors ever lived to an old age.”  
  
“ _Our_ ancestors.” Draco wouldn’t stop looking at him. “You might want to consider some career other than as an Auror anyway, Harry. It gives your own enemies a chance to strike at you, and more people than ever will hate you now that you’re married to me. You ought to come with me and accept another kind of job. I’m sure the Ministry would find something for you if you said you wanted it.”  
  
Harry wanted to choke with rage, was what he wanted. But he had not only Draco but the fascinated, worried eyes of the other Aurors to contend with. He shook his head. “It would be a sinecure, and that would be using the prestige I no longer possess, besides. There’s a lot of people who won’t give me the time of day now that I’m a Malfoy, or at least they distrust me.” This time, his glance sent Eliot and some of the nearer Aurors scurrying backwards.  
  
“I want you to look for something.”  
  
Harry’s fingers clenched once. He would give up a lot for Draco, he  _had_ given up a lot for Draco, and his family’s box was only the newest reminder. And now Draco wanted him to give up his job, too, which Harry loved, which he had only left for a temporary period of time to become settled into his new family?  
  
The world was going back to  _normal_ after the war with the Dementors’ ghosts. And Harry was going back to normal with it, as much as he could.   
  
“I disagree,” he said. “I disagree that I need to look, not to mention with everything else related to this,” he added, because Draco had opened his mouth.  
  
Draco gave him a small, smooth look, and then he inclined his head. “As you wish, Harry.”  
  
The coldness behind the words, the way that he stood back up from Harry until their arm and hand were only in the mildest contact, spoke worlds. Harry found that he couldn’t care, right now. He looked back at Eliot and the other Aurors, and smiled a little. “That’s settled, I hope,” he said. “If I defy my new family to stay an Auror, then you can’t ask for any greater proof of my loyalty.”  
  
They wanted to detain him, but he and Draco swept past towards the entrance. Draco walked completely differently, though, for all that no one else could have told so. His face was blank, cold, and his lips looked as if they would never smile again.  
  
 _We’ve got another battle ahead._  
  
Harry wished they could have fought it side by side, instead of against each other.


	24. A Chilling Argument

Harry waited until Draco had shut the Manor door behind them before he turned around with his arms folded and his nostrils flaring and his face gone some strange mixture of red and white. Draco reckoned that he could be grateful for small mercies, and stared straight back at Harry with his jaw set and his arms folding themselves. He didn't  _mean_ to look that mulish, it wasn't always in him, but Harry brought out a lot of things from him he had never known were there.  
  
Ossy appeared in the entrance hall, scooped up their cloaks, took one glance at them, and Apparated away.  
  
"You never discussed this with me," Harry began, in a voice that made it sound like he was contemplating charging Draco. "When was I supposed to find out? When I tried to go back to the Ministry and they told me, oh, you're not welcome anymore, your  _lord and master_ firecalled and told us that's not your job?"  
  
"I never would have done that," Draco said. He became aware that his arms shook a little. He braced them down and against himself. He was not going to fuck this up. "I would have discussed it with you like a civilized person before you tried to go back. And in  _private._ "  
  
"Oh, yes, the bad thing about this is that I brought it up  _in public,_ not that you want to do it in the first place!" Harry began roaming back and forth, slapping his hands together. Draco frowned and stepped out of the way, watching for his wand. "When they asked if I was coming back to the Ministry or was loyal to you, what would have happened if I'd smiled and politely refused to discuss it, hmmm? They would have thought they were right and you held something over my head. There was no way out of that situation that didn't involve me declaring my loyalties."  
  
Draco shook his head. "Then you could have held your temper and declared them in the right place."  
  
Harry turned slowly on one heel and gave Draco a look that made him flinch. "You're not listening," he said. "They would have suspected I was turning against them  _no matter what._ At least this makes me look as though I'm fighting you--"  
  
"And thus we're disunited, and no one will believe in the theory of our working marriage," Draco interrupted.  
  
"How would they have believed it from the moment you spoke up about me not retaining my job?" Harry turned his back and paced towards the wall as though he was finding the right place to kick it. "There's no  _way_ to look independent after that."  
  
Draco shook his head. He had a head full of words and a mouth full of emptiness. "I'm surprised that you thought I would allow this," he said at last. "You  _thought_ I would let you go back to a job so threatening as that?"  
  
Harry laughed and turned to face him. His eyes had taken on the taint of bitter ashes, and Draco found he didn't like to see that, but he had no idea how to get rid of the color. "What makes it more threatening than what I've endured so far as your husband, Draco? Nearly losing myself in the attempt to be your obedient emotionless pet. Seeing you stabbed in the back. Being attacked by a dragon. Being threatened with scandal by Zabini. There's no reason to think that being your demi-husband will be much safer than being an Auror. And there's plenty of people who will keep chasing me because I'm Harry Potter and they have grudges."  
  
"You're Harry  _Malfoy_."  
  
"That doesn't matter to them," Harry said, with a smile Draco wished he could smack. He might have, except that it was undignified for Malfoy spouses to brawl. "They don't care. I'm still the man who defeated Voldemort, and now they're going to see that I'm out of the supportive power structure of the Ministry and only have a few wards and house-elves to defend me, and think of me as a prime target. You've  _increased_ the danger to me with your stupid demands, not lessened it."  
  
"You won't be out in front of Dark wizards and getting cursed all the time for a few Galleons a day," Draco said coldly, while the pace of his heartbeat made him feel as though he had vertigo.  
  
"No, I'll be inside and getting cursed by them," Harry muttered, and lifted his hands to yank at his hair. "In parties, in manor houses, in all these places that I don't understand and don't like."  
  
"You knew that becoming my husband would involve sacrifice."  
  
Harry turned around and stared hard at Draco for a moment. Then he said, "Right. Sacrifice." His eyes had gone almost black. He looked at Draco until Draco was waiting with bated breath for what he'd say, and then nodded. "So. Here's the scroll." He held out the scroll about the demi-marriage that Draco had copied.  
  
"What are you going to do?" Draco snapped, accepting the scroll but watching Harry.  
  
"Going up to bed," Harry said, turning his back and climbing. "Since I can't have it anymore, I'll dream about the life I've lost."  
  
"But does this mean that you see it's impossible to be an Auror or not?" Draco called, taking a step after him.  
  
Harry leaned over the railing and looked at him again. Draco took a step back.  
  
"I've accepted it," Harry said quietly, "without understanding it."  
  
And he went back to climbing.  
  
Draco shook his head. He  _hated_ it when Harry retreated like this into quiet, into calm, instead of fighting. Surely he should have learned by now that Draco didn't  _want_ him to stifle his emotions, that he wanted a Harry who would fight and give Draco all he was, give to the demi-marriage all he was? They couldn't survive against their enemies, including the ones who would hunt them less openly, if Harry locked himself away.  
  
Ossy appeared in front of Draco, gravely observed him, shook his head, and Apparated away again.  
  
*  
  
Harry paced back and forth across his room. He'd never have thought to say this about any room in Malfoy Manor, but it wasn't  _big_ enough for pacing.  
  
He wanted to break something. But all the delicate decorations in the room suitable for smashing, or the sheets, which were suitable for tearing, were the Malfoys', and not his. Picking up a pillow and throwing it didn't relieve his feelings. Flying or dueling would have, but doubtless Draco would say that was too dangerous and tuck Harry back into bed like a china doll.  
  
 _One of the reasons he wanted to marry me was so that I could_ defend  _his family. Why the fuck does he want me to give that up, and play the good little husband--something I'm not? When he wants to rule, when he wants me to just yield and go along with him in public instead of discussing it first, then he's right back to saying that he wants an obedient automaton like the one I tried to give him before! He can't make up his fucking mind_ what  _he wants._  
  
"Master Harry."  
  
Harry turned around and frowned at Ossy. It hurt, physically, to confine his breath within his lungs, to keep from shouting. He ended up tucking his hands behind his back where he could dig his nails into his palms and not show Ossy what he was feeling. "Does Draco want me to watch Narcissa?" he asked, keeping his voice dead.  
  
Ossy studied him again, and then shook his head. "Master Harry is being a Malfoy, too," he told the pillow on the floor, and flapped his hands so that it straightened out and flew back to the bed. A few more waves of his hands, and the creases flattened and sharpened out. "He is having equal rights to the Malfoy property and to the Malfoy heritage." He paused and watched Harry expectantly.  
  
"I don't know what that means," Harry told him, and sat down on the edge of the bed. The outrage was draining away, but what replaced it wasn't the sparking willingness to work with Draco that he'd been feeling lately, either. He had done what he could. He had made this marriage, and there would be sacrifices. He had given up living on his own, his last name, access to his family's box (even if he hadn't known about that at the time), seeing his friends whenever he wanted, and now his job.  
  
 _What else is going to be left to give?_  
  
Well, at least he could live secure in the knowledge that whatever it was, Draco would find it and demand it.  
  
"Master Harry is  _not knowing what that means?_ "  
  
Harry started and looked up. Ossy was squeaking, something he almost never did, and his hands had come together in front of him as though to cover a cut throat. While Harry stared, Ossy swayed back and forth and nearly sat down on the floor.  
  
"Hey!" Harry leaped up and looked around, then grabbed one of the pillows off the bed again and positioned it behind Ossy. "Are you all right? You look like you're going to faint."  
  
Ossy immediately straightened up and glared at him again. "Master Harry is not taking care of Ossy," he said. "Ossy is taking care of  _Master Harry_."  
  
Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing. At least he knew how to bring a distressed house-elf back to life now, he supposed, so he could say being a Malfoy had given him something instead of taking it all away. "Fine," he said, as soothingly as he could. He tried to think of the voice he used on witnesses, and then threw the thought away. It wasn't as though he would ever need that voice again, was it? "Fine," he repeated, with his tone a little harder. "Are you going to  _explain_ what you meant, or are you going to just join with Draco in thinking I should know what you mean without an explanation?"  
  
"Ossy  _did_ thinks that Master Harry is knowing what he meant," Ossy said, and shook one finger at Harry. "Ossy did not be knowing he did not know! Now that Ossy knows he does not know, Master Harry  _will_ be knowing what Ossy is knowing, and will knows more!"  
  
Harry shook his head a little under the assault of verbs. "Fine," he repeated. "So what?"  
  
"Master Harry is Master Draco's heir."  
  
Harry would have held his hands up to the ceiling in helplessness, except he knew that wouldn't express what he was feeling. Nor could he think of anything that would except tugging on his hair again. "So  _what_?" he snapped. "He's made it clear that what that means is that I obey him and give up whatever he tells me to give up." And to think he had thought marrying into the Malfoy family would bring him some things, too, if only privacy behind the wards and more of that delicious food. He'd been a fool.  
  
"Master Harry is owning things in Malfoy Manor, too," Ossy said, and leaned close enough that Harry was afraid his dreams that night would be full of house-elf eyes. "Master Harry has no idea how many things he is owning."  
  
"I have a private vault or something?" Harry asked skeptically.  
  
"Not vaults," Ossy said, and then turned and moved towards a far corner of the room. Harry stood up to watch him go. He was aiming for a little carved table of some wood that was probably mahogany or something else expensive in a niche in the wall. On it was a crystal vase.  
  
"This is being Master Harry's," Ossy said, and turned around with the vase in his arms and an expectant look on his face.  
  
"So," Harry said, fighting the urge to break into an evil grin, and then giving in because Draco wasn't here, "if I wanted to break it and use a  _Reparo_ on it, there's no way that Draco would ever know?"  
  
"Ossy would be using the  _Reparo!_ " Ossy snapped, immediately lifting the vase over his head as if he had changed his mind about telling Harry the truth. "Master Harry is not to be straining himself."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. They didn't seem to understand in Malfoy Manor that he  _liked_ straining himself, that he was awake and alive when he could feel the blood pounding through his muscles and the magic fighting his control under his fingertips. But arguing with Ossy would be less productive than arguing with Draco right now, so he nodded and reached his hand out. "Okay, give it here."  
  
Ossy skimmed the vase gently across to him, and Harry held it, looking at it. Bright veins of purer light ran through the crystal, and he could see the wall through it if he squinted. It was like holding a cloud in his hands. It swelled so delicately from the bottom that it was hard to see where it happened even when he was actually touching it. It was a subtle, brilliant work of art.  
  
Harry concentrated until he had found all the similarities he could between the vase and Draco's way of life. Then he whirled and flung it at the far wall.  
  
It exploded hard enough to make the shards fly back at him. Harry's hand snapped up, but Ossy's shield had come down in front of him, and the crystal hit what seemed to be flexible air and dropped ringing to the floor. Ossy swept them up and made the vase whole again, while Harry collapsed on the bed and laughed.  
  
Someone pounded on the door.  
  
 _Someone,_ Harry thought, rolling his eyes as he got up. He would have to change more of the habits of his brain before he would ever be comfortable living in Malfoy Manor, that much was certain. There was only one person it could be, and always would be, even if Harry didn't want to think his name.  
  
He opened the door to find Draco staring at him, pushing hair back from his eyes. "What was that?" he demanded. "I heard a crash."  
  
Harry toyed for a moment with the idea of pretending that he had broken his own leg in frustration, but then he shook his head and said, "Ossy was just reminding me that if I break a vase  _I own,_ he can repair it."  
  
Draco stared at him some more with his mouth open. Then he said, "I haven't distressed you that much."  
  
 _Oh, you idiot,_ Harry thought, resisting the urge to subject Draco's head to the same treatment as the vase. He shrugged and turned away. "Whatever you say," he said, nudging the door shut behind him.  
  
The door hit something, probably Draco's outstretched foot from the way it made him yelp, and then he limped in, rubbing his shin and glaring at Harry. "I don't like that," he said.  
  
"Me shutting the door in your face?" Harry glared at him, his arms folding again in what felt almost like a comforting blanket around his chest by now. "Well, if you're serious about allowing me to have some privacy, then I don't see why I can't do it."  
  
"I hate it when you  _retreat!_ " Draco snarled, and his face was wild and pink and flushed and nothing like the vase that Ossy still cradled off to the side at all. "I hated it in Hogwarts, and I hate it now! I want you to  _tell me_ what's wrong!"  
  
Harry felt himself choking on emotion. Then he said, "You  _fucker._ What have I  _been doing?_ But you tell me that it can't possibly be that I like my job, that I can't possibly feel frustrated that you made another stupid bloody decision and overwhelmed all of mine, that I can't possibly think this won't do anything because our enemies won't stop coming after me. I tell you the truth, and you don't accept it. What  _fucking bloody other thing_ am I supposed to tell you?"  
  
*  
  
Draco shook his head. He had words now in his mouth, but he didn't know which were the right ones to speak. Harry's eyes were as brilliant as stars, as the lines in the vase Ossy had repaired, as the magic that Draco could feel tumbling and sparking around the Manor in the new wards when he reached out for them.  
  
"I want you to tell me the truth," he said at last, because it was the only thing that mattered. Well, that and that Harry not shut himself away from Draco and just give him what he wanted all the time. Draco wanted his willing surrender, wanted Harry to agree with him that, yes, it  _was_ for the best that he give up the Auror job, and stay inside the Manor more often, and find something else he wanted to do. "Why do you want the Auror job so much? Are you still addicted to saving people? Is that it? Or is it something else that I haven't grasped yet?"  
  
Harry buried his forehead in his hands and sighed. Draco caught Ossy's gaze, and looked hastily away again.  
  
"Well?" he asked, when several minutes had passed and Harry still hadn't answered.  
  
"Something you haven't grasped yet," Harry muttered. "How can you--how can you be  _content_ to live in the world without making a difference? Without changing it?" He turned around and stared at Draco with an earnestness that made Draco open his mouth to speak, and then close it again, because if something mocking came out of it right now, Harry would probably never trust him again. "How can you just stay inside the Manor and do  _nothing_?"  
  
"I'm not doing nothing," Draco pointed out coldly. "I'm managing the Malfoy affairs, and getting used to my demi-marriage, and taking care of my mother."  
  
"But what were you doing before I shattered your wards?" Harry demanded, leaning forwards. "Before your mother was sick, and you were demi-married? Can the Malfoy business affairs fill one end of your week to the next?"  
  
Draco frowned and shook his head. He wanted to say that he could barely remember a time before he had been arguing with Harry, but that wasn't true. "I enjoyed myself," he said. "Took leisure time for myself, which isn't something you ever seemed to consider. I read, and studied, and learned spells." He glanced at the basilisk wand resting against his waist. "Something I can't do now."  
  
"It sounds like a boring life."  
  
Draco glared at him. "Spoken like someone who's spent his life so much in the service of other people that he doesn't even know there  _is_ anything else."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Spoken like someone who's been so content pursuing his own pleasure that he doesn't realize there are  _different_ kinds of pleasure," he retorted. "That isn't what I want, Draco. I need a career. I need to connect with other people. I need to show them that I can do something more than float on laurels. That's what everyone expected me to do, after the war. They thought that destroying  _him_  was enough for me. I want to show them it's not."  
  
Draco distantly noted Harry's courtesy in not using the Dark Lord's name, but he was more focused on the words themselves, perhaps the most honest and most revealing thing he had ever heard Harry say. "You realize that you don't sound as though you live your life the way you want to?" he asked quietly. "It sounds like it's controlled by other people's opinions, as if what they think of you matters more than anything else."  
  
Harry gave the most humorless, bitter laugh that Draco had ever heard; it made him want to clean his mouth out. "I'm always going to be someone to whom people's opinions have to matter," he snapped. "Because otherwise they'll call me a playboy, a fame-whore, a madman, someone who's desperately chasing after his lost youth to try and maintain his reputation as the Hero and Savior. The least I can do is influence what they think of me so it's a more pleasant life to lead."  
  
Draco was breathing deeply, as though he stood on the edge of a high mountain. He tried to make himself stop doing it, but that just made his chest feel stifled, so he let himself keep doing it, and used the extra breath to smile at Harry and speak the right words, this time. "But you don't have to do that anymore, do you see? We can give you the tools to ignore what they think of you."  
  
Harry snorted and flopped back on the pillow that looked oddly disarranged, his arms folded behind his head. "Of course we can. As long as I ignore the fact that everyone in the Ministry will think I'm in thrall to you the minute I submit my official resignation."  
  
"But you don't  _need to care_." Draco made those words as blunt as he could, and from the way Harry rolled one eye towards him, he knew it and didn't appreciate it. "You can if you want to. But you don't need to spend the rest of your life placating them and giving interviews to anyone who wants them, or doing nice, gentle, cautious things just in case the Ministry decides to lock you up."  
  
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. "I thought that once, too. But then I discovered the only way I could live independent of society was to embrace what everyone expected of me--the crazy Savior who thinks that his fame makes him above the laws. I  _want_ to be connected, Draco. I  _want_ to do the same things that everyone else does, and make them think they can arrest me if they need to, if I break a law."  
  
"You do that all the time, and they  _still_ don't think that."  
  
Harry rolled towards him with a fluid grace, coming up on one elbow and maintaining the pose with far more ease than Draco knew he could have done. "Explain what you mean." His voice burbled and growled like the undertone of several of Draco's nightmares.  
  
"I mean," Draco said, sure the words were right even if the flat stare on Harry's face wasn't, "that you spend all your time trying to be ordinary and trying to placate them, this constant balancing act, and it doesn't  _matter._ Your long service to the Ministry isn't important. They still turned against you the moment they found out we were married. They thought you would be more loyal to the Malfoys than them even if they didn't know you would. They thought changing your name meant changing who you were." It would have been, for many pure-bloods, but not for Harry, and Draco acknowledged to himself that he had been unreasonable to think that would happen. "You aren't ordinary, Harry. You might as well live your life the way you want, because nothing else will ever satisfy them."  
  
"I  _was_ living my life the way I wanted!"  
  
Draco met and held his eyes. "Were you?" he asked quietly. "I'm not talking about your job. We can--talk about that." He had the feeling he'd just thrown himself to the ground, but the way Harry's eyes brightened made the feeling more than worth it. "I'm talking about the way you had to guard your temper, the way you had to volunteer to save the world from the Dementor ghosts even though everyone was suffering equally, because people just sat back and expected you to save them. How many honest things have you said to anyone in the Ministry who's not already your friend? How many times have you done something you didn't want in the hopes that it would lessen their fear of you, and found out that it wouldn't?"  
  
*  
  
Harry shut his eyes. He was thinking of the expression on Eliot's face, the way that people in the Ministry party they'd attended who had nothing to do with Draco had glanced at him and then away, the time he'd saved a young Auror trainee's life last year and had to deal with his terror because the trainee thought Harry had used a Dark spell.  
  
It was never enough. Only his friends knew him and loved him for who he was.  
  
 _Those friends don't include Draco._  
  
But maybe they could, if he could offer Harry something as a trade, as a bargain, instead of endlessly demanding. And he had learned, if he was offering to talk about Harry's job.  
  
Harry opened his eyes and shook his head. "There's no--I can't promise that I won't want to return to being an Auror."  
  
"I know," Draco said. He said nothing else, but held out his hand.  
  
Harry swallowed a few times, and thought again about the way the Aurors had assumed he was a different person the minute he changed his name--or rather, the same person, just revealing the true, Dark colors they'd always thought he'd had--and reached out for Draco's hand.  
  
 _Maybe the only true thing he said is that I'm not ordinary._  
  
But in that case, it's time to stop lying to myself.


	25. Outside the Walls

“I really need to spend some time with Ron and Hermione.”  
  
Draco kept his eyes fastened on the plate in front of him. It contained yet another delicious breakfast the house-elves, specifically Ossy, had prepared. The more slowly he swallowed thick, warm scones, and the more slowly butter slid down his throat, the better he could deal with what Harry was saying.  
  
“They know how you’re doing, surely?” Draco murmured, when the silence from the other side of the table grew oppressive. “I haven’t forbidden you to communicate with them or anything like that.”  
  
“I know, Draco.” There was the clink of a teacup as it was set in its saucer, which was better than Draco would have expected. He leaned back and met Harry’s eyes, finally. Harry looked at him in turn, his fingers playing idly with the edge of the saucer now. “But I haven’t even asked after George, and although he’d decided to live, he was still in pretty bad shape. I haven’t helped rebuild the Burrow other than one day. I’ve told them about my problems, but—I haven’t treated them the same way.”  
  
Draco grimaced, but nodded. The way that Harry described his relationship with the Terrible Two, it did seem like they would expect some kind of return for the thought that they poured into their feelings for Harry. “I just get nervous at the thought of you leaving the Manor. You know that.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “And why don’t you come with me?”  
  
Draco did some more staring, but this time, it had nothing to do with a silent challenge to Harry’s plans. Harry cocked his head mulishly. “Well,  _why_? In the end, you know, you’re going to have to face the fact that you’re married to me and I’m still friends with them. They’ll have to face it, too,” he added, cutting off the retort Draco had been about to add. “But it’s different for them. They’ll deal with it, sure. But they have each other, and I didn’t become part of their family in the same way.”  
  
“They would have been thrilled if you had,” Draco muttered, looking down at his hands.  
  
“No, they wouldn’t have, because they never would have coerced me,” Harry said. “Stop  _flinching._ I’m getting used to it, but you have to admit those first days weren’t exactly good.”  
  
 _And they nearly became bad again yesterday,_ Draco heard the unspoken reminder. He tightened his lips, but nodded and waved his hand. “Someday, I’ll come with you and be properly introduced. But in the meantime, Affy has been watching my mother with almost no letup. I should spend time with her, really, seeing as she  _is_ my mother.” Maybe in the peace of her room, he could decide what he should do.  
  
Harry’s face softened, and he stood up and walked around the table, laying his hand for a moment on Draco’s shoulder. “They’ll be honored to meet you as my husband,” he said quietly, ignoring the way that Draco eyed him. “I’m  _sure_ they will.”   
  
And he left it there, turning and leaving as though he considered everything settled between them.  
  
 _It has to be,_ Draco thought, staring into the saucer in front of him and ignoring the temptation to follow Harry out of the room and ask when he would return. They had to have some time apart, and independence. The threats that had attacked them so far, the enemies that Blaise had hinted he knew about, wouldn’t attack them the instant they were apart. In fact, being together so far hadn’t stopped them.  
  
But he wanted Harry here.  
  
Draco blinked and rose to his feet.  _I need to go see my mother. But I might—  
  
I might think about what I just decided, and think about revealing it to Harry, too, and what he might say about it._  
  
*  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Ron’s voice was so deep and relieved that Harry immediately moved towards him, reaching out one hand so that Ron could rise and clasp it. “What is it? Has something happened that would make it harder for George to live? Or something with your mum and the Burrow?”  
  
Ron shook his head. But he kept his head bowed, and didn’t reject Harry’s hand or move away from it, so Harry stood there, holding him, letting strength flow from him into Ron the way he would have offered it to Draco.  
  
 _No. It’s different. Because you don’t resent giving it to Ron, or Hermione, or any of the Weasleys, but you have resented it when you had to give to Draco._  
  
Harry cocked his head. A revelation that he would have to think about, but he would have to do it  _later._ From the way Ron was bringing his head up, he was ready to talk about what had bothered him, and after that, Harry might have to act quickly.  
  
“I’m all right, now,” Ron said, with a sharp bob of his head. He sat down on the chair, and Harry knelt beside him in silence. Ron stared at his hands for a minute, then wrenched his head up and said, “It’s the Ministry.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Hermione is running into more opposition on that house-elf rights law than she counted on?” Given how much she had talked about the opposition, Harry found it hard to think she’d underestimated them.  
  
“Not her,” Ron said grimly. “Me.”  
  
Harry nodded. “You’re catching some of the backlash for being her husband?”  
  
Ron gave him a faint, old smile. Harry relaxed. No matter what, when Ron smiled like that, it was going to be all right, though he also knew from the twist along the side of Ron’s mouth that he wasn’t particularly going to like what Ron had to say.  
  
“Sometimes your tendency to think of yourself last is just as infuriating as it ever was,” Ron muttered. “No.  _You,_ Harry. I’m catching backlash for being your partner, and apparently the one who should have prevented you from marrying ‘that faithless Malfoy.’”  
  
Harry stood up. He paced back and forth a minute, and then said, “Should I be happy that they at least know good French?”  
  
Ron smiled, but said nothing. He watched Harry, and Harry shook his head.  
  
“I’m sorry, mate,” he said at last. “I knew it had got bad, but not how bad.”  
  
“There was no telling how bad it had got.” Ron leaned back in his chair. “No one will  _talk_ to me as though I’m just myself, Ron Weasley, who they all know. They twitter on and on about how it might affect them, and how you  _might_ turn against them.” He twitched open one eye to watch Harry. “I think that’s what scares them most, the uncertainty. If you would just go ahead and declare that you’re evil and start laughing on top of buildings already, then they might treat you better.”  
  
Harry didn’t smile. “And you.” He prowled back and forth, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ron. I don’t know what to say. Draco and I are dealing with other enemies, too, and these rumors could be spread by the same ones, or more of them. But I’m sorry you’re dealing with that as my partner.”  
  
Ron reached out and gripped his arm. “If you’re going to say that you’re sorry you saved the world, or sorry for being my partner,” he said fiercely, “then  _don’t._ I wanted you to know, and I want your help in dealing with it. But I never wanted to make you feel guilt.”  
  
“Because I feel too much already, right?” Harry said, grinning at Ron, and thinking a little about how Draco’s grip on his arm felt different than Ron’s. Well, Draco was his husband and Ron was his friend. It made sense that it would be a  _little_ different.  
  
 _Not this different._  
  
Harry ignored the idea with an effort. He had done what he could to repair things with Draco right now, and it was his friend who needed his help.  
  
“I want to help the situation,” he said, “but in the meantime, you’re going to have to tell me what would do that. What do you think would?”  
  
Ron pondered for a while with his head down. Harry took a seat across from him and waited with his hands folded on the table. He could feel his pulse pounding steadily in him, with the same kind of trust that he would have shown Ron when they were waiting to launch a raid together.  
  
Not the same as the confidence and trust he was developing around Draco, now. But the difference was, he knew this feeling better, and trusted it more.  
  
Finally, Ron lifted his head and said, “You’re going to leave your job in the Aurors? That’s certain?”  
  
Harry gave him a hard little smile. “ _Draco_  thought it was certain, and I was almost prepared to yield in despair, because I thought I would never convince him. But one of the house-elves convinced me to try again, and reminded me that I have equal rights to the Malfoy property as Draco’s heir.”  
  
Ron stared. “One of the  _house-_ elves? I thought none of them ever went against their masters. Well, none of them but Dobby, anyway.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “So did I, but I’m one of his masters, now. That makes a difference in the way he treats me.” He remembered the hostility in Ossy’s eyes when he’d first come to the Manor, and had to smile when he compared it to the solicitousness that he showed Harry now.  
  
“Well, all right,” Ron said, still sounding a bit blank. “If you’re not leaving your job, then I think the best thing you could do would be…” He let his voice trail off, and sat there so long that Harry finally reached across the table and waved his hand up and down in front of Ron’s face. Then Ron cleared his throat and blinked sheepishly.   
  
“I think I know it,” he said, “but I’m not sure if it actually  _would_ be, or if I’m just envisioning what I want to see, instead.”  
  
“What you want to see?” Harry scowled. Ron had been a good Auror, steadier and more willing to follow the rules than Harry had been, and sometimes so quiet that most of their enemies would forget about him and talk freely in front of him—something that had proven useful more than once. Now, though, he leaned forwards with a gleam in his eyes like the fireworks George sold.  
  
“I want to see you tell the bastards off,” Ron said. “I’ve wanted that for a long time. I’d watch you bite your tongue over something stupid and unfair that someone else had said, and bow your head, and nothing would change, except that whoever challenged you would have got their way. And I’d steam and think about what would have happened if you’d claimed your rights after the war—all the things they wanted to give you. But maybe that wouldn’t be the best thing,” he added thoughtfully.  
  
“Er,” Harry said helplessly. He’d never known Ron felt that way. “But if I’d claimed my rights, as you call it, I would have been evil. Or at least someone spoiled by taking advantage of my fame.”  
  
Ron stared at him. “What? No. You’re not going to become evil because you accept a few Orders of Merlin and some money.”  
  
“Really?” Harry scratched the back of his head. It sounded like something Draco would have said, sure, but Harry had never had the slightest  _idea_ that Ron wanted him to get more praise and fame than he did. Of course Ron and Hermione deserved more credit for the help they’d given Harry during the war than they’d received; it was only natural for Harry to feel that way when so many refused even to acknowledge them as war heroes. But this was the opposite of that.  
  
“Thinking of yourself last, as usual,” Ron muttered, but less indulgently this time. He shook his head at Harry. “You’ve started believing too many of the rumors they’ve tried to spread about you, if you think of yourself as that corruptible.”  
  
Harry bit his lip. “Well, maybe. But why would now be a good time to tell everyone off? I ought to be concentrating on reassuring them, showing them that marriage to Draco won’t change me and I’m still as good an Auror as I ever was.”  
  
Ron snorted and rolled his eyes. “Because  _that’s_ worked so well in the past. No, you ought to do it now because you have them by the balls, not the other way around. You’re married to someone who doesn’t give a fuck what the Ministry thinks, and in fact would prefer that you not work there. He’s someone whose name has a pull with people, too. He’s not been your friend for a long time, so people aren’t used to thinking about him at your side and ignoring them, the way they do with me. And he’s independently wealthy—well, the two of you are together, anyway. You don’t  _need_ the Ministry pay to survive. Your reputation will take damage if you quit, sure, but it takes damage with you staying there, too. For once, you have someplace to go if you quit.”  
  
“They know I don’t want to,” Harry said, but his voice was slow, as he thought of the faces he would like to make twist with surprise.  
  
“Do they?” Ron tilted his chair back and forth. “I don’t know about that. They believe a whole mass of contradictory things about you anyway, that you’re a hero and a villain, selfless and selfish, that you need to behave perfectly but you go out at night and murder people and sleep around. This is only one more to add to the mix. And there are plenty of people who wouldn’t want to take the chance.”  
  
Harry grimaced. “I hate to put Kingsley in that position.”  
  
Ron looked at him, gaze keen as a blade. “Frankly, Kingsley should have done something a long time ago to quash these ridiculous rumors and reassure the other Aurors that they could trust you. I understand why he didn’t, because he wanted to maintain his distance from accusations of favoritism, but that means your defection should hurt him less, too.”  
  
Harry hesitated. "That's tempting," he said softly. "To think of it that way, I mean. You have no idea how tempting that is."  
  
"Your life would be improved if you gave into temptation more often," Ron said, shaking his head. "You're not going to become suddenly evil if you make a bold move like that. The worst thing that could happen is that it makes no difference, and everyone keeps thinking you're evil. In which case, fuck them."  
  
Harry laughed, feeling his heart rising clean and free, like a seagull above the waves. Ron was right. All those years of playing complacent Golden Boy and Ministry spokesman hadn't changed their minds about him, or eased their fear--although he hadn't realized how much he had gone along to get along until he spoke about those years to Draco. He might as well do what he wanted for once.  
  
And, astonishingly, this was what he wanted.   
  
"Ron," he said, lifting his hand in a salute that made Ron start to grin from what looked like the very bottom of his heart, "my friend, you're going to get what you were hoping for."  
  
*  
  
Draco sat in silence by his mother's bedside, and thought.  
  
Narcissa lay still in the bed, her eyes shut, the unaccustomed wrinkles cutting across her skin. She looked as if she was made of crumpled parchment. Draco was grateful for Healer Bowman's demand that he watch her heartbeat and breathing every moment, as that was the most effective way for Draco himself to know that she was still alive.  
  
"Things have changed, Mother," he whispered. "I wonder if you would be proud of the son-in-law I chose for you?"  
  
No answer. Still she lay, chest rising and falling, peaceful as death.  
  
Draco sighed and touched his fingers to his forehead for a moment. He could feel a headache coming on. And he didn't want to spend lots of time brooding about something he couldn't change, the way he knew he would if he thought more about Narcissa's situation at the moment. Instead, he took the basilisk wand from his pocket and turned it over, fingers sliding up and down the smooth wood.  
  
 _Such a difference from my first wand._  The hawthorn wand had been rougher than this one, but Draco had known those particular warps and ridges and deformities the way he knew the small cuts and bumps and scrapes on his own hands. The basilisk wand gleamed like a treasure chest, and like the lid of any treasure chest worth its price, it was shut and locked against him.  
  
He hadn't practiced much with the wand lately. Of course, he'd had other things to think of, and it had become usual and comfortable for him to step back and wait for Harry to cast the spells.  
  
 _That's another thing that will have to stop. Relying on Harry so much to solve each and every problem.  
  
_ Draco scowled down at the basilisk wand and flipped it over in his fingers. "Fat lot of good you do me," he muttered at it. "Didn't Ollivander promise that you were something special and you could perform all kinds of special spells? Well, so far I don't see much sign if it."  
  
The wand sent a sharp, tingling spark up his arm.  
  
Draco dropped it to the floor with a curse, and then sent a guilty look at his mother. The chances that she would wake up from the sound, when she hadn't woken up for anything so far, were remote, but that didn't salve his conscience.  
  
No, she hadn’t woken. Draco stooped down and picked up the wand using only two fingers, watching it with his head cocked so that it wouldn’t change size or shape without his seeing it.  
  
The wand  _didn’t_ change. Draco had the sense of a coiled power watching him nonetheless, waiting for him to do something the wand didn’t approve of so it could turn on him.  
  
“We’re stuck together, you and I,” Draco told it. “I’m the wizard you chose, and if you didn’t like the choice, then you shouldn’t have made it.”  
  
The wand sat still in his palm, but Draco could imagine what it would say about the narrowness of its options if it  _could_ speak. Draco sneered at it.  
  
“You’ll never be the wand I had,” he said. “I’ll never be the wizard I was.” He paused, and hoped that whatever strange intelligence lay behind the wand was listening. He had to put away the feeling that he was foolish for taking this seriously at all. Nothing else had worked with the wand, so he might as well try talking to it. “If we don’t practice. That’s the only way to serve a master you’d find worthy of you, a powerful wizard. Work with me. Serve me. Practice until the spells are instinctive.”  
  
Nothing happened, again, but at least no other spark zipped up Draco’s arm when he gingerly slid the wand back into its holster. He took a deep breath and focused on his mother again.  
  
Her eyes were open.  
  
Draco started to his feet with tears in his eyes. He tried to breathe, then tried to speak, and was equally unsuccessful at both. He shook his head and reached out towards his mother with his hand seeming to barely move, covering the distance between them at the slowest rate he’d ever seen anything travel.  
  
His mother stared back and forth between him and his hand, and then raised her own arm to meet his, or tried. Her hand only rose a short distance before it fell back against the pillow. Narcissa turned her head slowly, blinking her eyes in an effort, it seemed, to make them refocus.  
  
When she saw the lines and wrinkles on her skin, she shut her eyes and did not open them again.  
  
“No, Mother,” Draco whispered, kneeling down beside the bed and crowding close. If she fell back into that coma-like sleep, he wasn’t sure what he would do. “It’s all right, it’s okay, it’s magical aging and Healer Bowman thinks we may be able to reverse it. If you just open your eyes and talk to me—it’s been more than a week, it’s been more than a fortnight, Harry Potter is here now and defending us, can you  _talk_ to me?”  
  
His words made her open her eyes again, though this time a film covered them and she looked more like an old woman than Draco had  _known_ she could look. She licked her lips slowly. Draco at once reached for the tumbler of water that stood on the nearby table and held the whole thing to her lips, not caring about the glass. This was the first sign of thirst or hunger she’d shown since the original blow had struck her down.  
  
“Draco?” she said at last, and though her voice was still fragile, a reed rubbing against a piece of paper, Draco was glad that she had said that much. He took her hand and held it as tightly as he dared without breaking anything.  
  
“Yes,” he whispered. “Harry Potter cast a spell to defeat the Dementor ghosts, and he pulled on the strength of those who were joined to him. He pulled the most on us because—”  
  
“The life-debts,” Narcissa said, and closed her eyes again, though her fingers moved restlessly inside Draco’s, so at least he knew she wasn’t drifting away from him again. “And I was so proud that our family was bound to him with those debts. Perhaps I should have known it could never work out that way.”  
  
Draco nuzzled his cheek against her hand. “He aged you, and broke my wand and the wards,” he said, words tumbling now, because he never knew the moment when she might fall back into that coma. “But he agreed to pay the old price for it. He’s my demi-husband now, Mother, and he’s taken the name Malfoy. And he helped set up new wards, and I have a new wand.” He held it up for her to see if she wanted.  
  
When Narcissa dragged her eyes open again, though, it was on his face she focused, not the wand. “Harry Malfoy?” she whispered.  
  
Draco nodded. “He’s been better about it than I could have dreamed, Mother. He’s taken care of you, and of me when someone attacked me at the first party we went to. There are problems, but I’m not alone.  _We’re_ not alone.” He hesitated, then added, “He’s done things I never imagined he could.”  
  
“That is Harry Potter, then,” his mother said, shaking her head again. She hesitated, then reached up and drew her fingers through Draco’s hair, smoothing it back from his face. “I’m only sorry that you need to suffer alone,” she whispered.  
  
“He shares the suffering, even,” Draco said, and met and held her eyes.  
  
After a moment, Narcissa smiled and nodded, and although she returned to sleep very soon after, Draco was confident that he had given her some peace, and she would return.  
  
 _And maybe that means I can have some peace, too._


	26. Decisions Remade

Harry appeared outside the Manor gates. He could have appeared inside the wards, but he thought he would give them a chance to chime and warn Draco he was coming. Draco might be in the middle of practice with his wand, or watching his mother, and this would give him extra time to decide where he wanted to meet Harry.  
  
 _Being considerate right now won’t matter that much when you tell him that Ron convinced you to do what he couldn’t._  
  
Harry grimaced. Ron had also approached him as his best friend rather than telling Harry that going into danger was wrong for him. And standing up to the Ministry the way Harry planned on doing would carry plenty of dangerous consequences of its own.   
  
He took one step forwards.  
  
And the air erupted around him.  
  
Harry had cast himself to the ground before he thought about what he was doing, Auror instincts kicking into high alert. The spell, whatever it was, hit the dirt beside him and created a dint the size of his skull. Harry hissed and rolled, and the next blow hit the dirt at his feet, sending pebbles flying. He felt a small scratch on his cheek begin to bleed and realized that he would be pouring blood if he stayed here.  
  
He didn’t intend to remain helpless in the face of an attack, though. He had always carried the attack to his enemies, and that wasn’t about to change now that he was perhaps on the verge of no longer being an Auror.  
  
He doubled up once more, as though he still didn’t know where the curses were coming from and was helpless in the face of them, and then sprang to his feet as the next curse bounded towards him. He whipped his head in the most likely direction, and saw a witch staring at him from a short distance away.  
  
Harry leaped into the air, casting three spells on himself in quick succession, and one towards the witch. The spells made him lighten and drift like thistledown, so that the last strike of the curse missed him. The wind sent him drifting sideways, but Harry muttered a  _Finite_ and dropped to the ground closer to the witch, exactly where he wanted to be.  
  
The curse he used on his attacker caused a net of sticky strands to boil out of the earth around her, snaring her hands and binding them together when she would have used her wand on him. She shrieked and cast a spell Harry didn’t know, but the very sound of the incantation made him wince.  
  
He found out what it did when the air in front of him boiled like the ground had to produce the net and a tiger came into being, stalking towards him. It trailed off into mist around the tail area, but he didn’t think that mattered when he could see the solid legs and long claws on the nearer end.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He knew spells to defeat a conjuring like this, but he hadn’t used them in a long time. As he searched his memory for them, the tiger hissed, spat, and leaped.  
  
Harry used his spells again, and drifted aside from the first lunge, but the tiger landed on the spot and spun around lightly, far more lightly than Harry would have thought such a huge beast could move, and lashed out with the nearer paw.  
  
He began to bleed, dripping heavily from the place on his arm where the smallest claw had raked him, and that just pissed him off more. Harry opened his eyes and glared at the tiger. He didn’t remember the  _exact_ spell that he could have used to defeat it, but that didn’t mean he was helpless.  
  
“ _Commuto_ ,” he said.  
  
And the tiger exploded.  
  
*  
  
Draco gasped as a chain seemed to constrict around his lungs and yank him to his feet from the inside. He bolted up, staring around. What was going on? Had someone pierced the wards? The old ones hadn’t reacted like this when they were breached, but it was true that the new ones might be different.  
  
Then the places on his arms chewed by the mist during the demi-marriage ritual began to burn, and Draco knew what this was.  
  
 _A husband knows when his spouse is in danger…_  
  
He turned and ran towards the top of the stairs, shouting for Affy and Ossy to take over the watch on his mother. He heard the pops as they obeyed, and then he could bend forwards and pay attention to the distance still separating him from Harry. He had ridiculously far to go before he would be able to get beyond the anti-Apparition wards.  
  
On the other hand, lowering them, right now, might be an even worse idea.  
  
Finally, he flung open the front door and ran out onto the grounds. The whirl of light beyond the gates told him where the battle was going on, at least. He shut his eyes and Apparated the distance.  
  
He arrived in the middle of what looked like a rain of orange fur, and immediately located the witch who had attacked Harry, bound in a sticky web that grew over her shoulders and mouth now. Her hands were still on her wand, though, actually bound there by the strands of the web, and she was still struggling to move it in some spell that wouldn’t require a lot of different swishes.  
  
Draco Stunned her, efficiently. This one, he intended to get some answers out of.  
  
That done, he fell back a step and looked around. There didn’t seem to be any other attackers, and the orange rain had stopped. Harry, cradling his bleeding arm, stood in the middle of the grass and stared at Draco.  
  
“What?” Draco snapped.  
  
“You just Apparated here,” Harry whispered. “And you cast a Stunner. Is that something you were practicing with the basilisk wand today? I know you couldn’t do those spells just a short while ago.”  
  
Draco started and stared down at the wand in his hands. He hadn’t thought of it, had only reached for the power and cast the spell and demanded that it be there to fill him. The power had felt no different than if it had come from the hawthorn wand. Perhaps he had flown a bit farther in the Apparition, had Stunned the woman with more force than normal, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could remember until he turned his mind to it.  
  
“I didn’t practice it,” he said. “But I was talking to the wand about the choices it had as my wand.” He cast a defensive look at Harry, but he was gravely listening, not laughing because Draco had talked to a piece of wood. “And Mother woke up.”  
  
Harry immediately beamed at him. “That’s  _wonderful._  What did she say?” He shifted, reaching out towards Draco, and then swayed as blood began to drip from his wound to the ground.  
  
“Idiot!” Draco snapped at him, and laid the basilisk wand against the wound, this time focusing on what he wanted without thinking of a particular spell. He was curious to see what the power would do when he was paying attention to it.  
  
The basilisk wand shimmered with a thread of gold along the wood, and then Harry gasped and jerked his arm away. The bleeding had stopped, Draco saw, and there was a long series of scabs along the surface of the injury, as though it had spent some days healing. Harry blinked at him, and Draco blinked back.  
  
“Impressive,” Harry said, and then nodded to the woman. “She conjured a tiger construct to fight me. That was what lashed out and gave me the wound.”  
  
Draco frowned at him. “I only came because I felt the demi-marriage ritual telling me you were in danger. You could have  _died._ Why didn’t you bind her more efficiently, or at least Stun her?”  
  
“I thought the web would be enough.” Harry ran his hand through his hair, then winced. His arm must still hurt, even if Draco had done the major work of healing for him. “She managed to cast the spell that created the tiger after that, though. And then I cast a spell that would have turned the tiger into something else if it was a real animal, but constructs and conjurations can’t stand up to that kind of thing, being treated as  _real_. So it exploded.”  
  
Draco realized what the orange rain falling around him was then, and grimaced. It was all he could do to keep from swatting at his clothes to get it off him. “Good,” he said, a little stiffly, and turned to consider their captive. “I’ll want to think later about why the basilisk wand started responding so much better, but we have someone to question, don’t we?”  
  
From the vicious gleam in Harry’s eyes, he absolutely agreed.  
  
*  
  
The witch took a long time to wake up. Harry sat by the bed where Draco had placed her, on the small stool that Draco had thought appropriate for interrogation room furniture, and examined his arm.  
  
Yes, the basilisk wand had healed it completely. Harry shook his head wonderingly. Draco was a much more powerful wizard than Harry had thought he was, or he was connecting with this wand at a deeper and more fundamental level than he had with his hawthorn wand.  
  
 _Don’t think like that._  
  
Harry shifted uneasily. Yes, he didn’t want to think like that. He didn’t want to think that what he had done to Draco and his mother had had good consequences. He knew that Draco and Narcissa would have preferred to live their lives as they had been, without the connection of the life-debts, without the way that Harry had changed them.   
  
Harry might be happy, sometimes, to be part of this demi-marriage and part of the Malfoy family, and he knew Draco was grateful for his protection and some of the things he had done. But that was a far cry from assuming that Draco was  _happy_ Harry had shattered his wand, his wards, his mother’s health.  
  
His life.  
  
Harry started and glanced up as Draco came in with a candle. He carried it, instead of floating it along behind him, the way Harry had been sure he would now that he was in control of his magic again. Perhaps Draco thought it better not to take chances.   
  
“She isn’t awake yet?” Draco set the candle down on the table and shook his head. “Ridiculous. Or…” He paused and looked more closely, then nodded. “Feigning sleep,” he whispered to Harry. “I should have known. She’s hoping to spy on us that way, and learn some of our secrets. Well.” He leaned in towards the witch’s face—Harry noticed the way her breathing sped up a little despite what he thought was a deep struggle to keep from showing it—and clapped his hands.  
  
The witch flinched backwards into the pillow, and then her eyes opened. She looked down as though surprised to find herself bound hand and foot to the sides of the bed, with thick chains that were no mere conjuring or illusion; Draco had had Harry call them into being. She looked back up at them, without expression.  
  
“You don’t intend to tell us anything, I know,” Draco said, with a gentleness that made Harry blink. Of course, he could hear the menace under the softness, and he was sure the witch could, too. But Harry had assumed he would be taking the lead in the interrogation because he had Auror training in doing so. Perhaps he was here to restrain Draco instead.  
  
“What you intend doesn’t matter,” Draco continued, and reached into his pocket. The way the witch watched him, she was probably expecting him to come out with a knife, but Draco held up a potions vial instead.  
  
Harry didn’t understand the green color the witch had turned until Draco looked at him, and the angle of his hand changed. Then Harry could make out the color of the potion in the firelight. It was Veritaserum.  
  
“Yes, I’ve brewed it, and yes, it works,” Draco said, although the cautious way he said the first words made Harry wonder if he wasn’t lying. At least he seemed to think that he had reasons to trust the potion, and that was good enough for Harry. “You won’t be able to avoid having us put this on your tongue, with the position you’re in. Do you want to tell us the truth before then?”  
  
The witch’s eyes had widened to the point that Harry thought they must hurt. Her breathing had begun to rasp in and out of her throat, and he thought the same thing about that. But after a moment, she turned her head to the side and shut her eyes—probably the only gesture of rejection she could make right now.  
  
“If you want it to be that way,” Draco said, and put the Veritaserum down on a table behind him. His gaze didn’t move from the woman as he clasped his hands together behind his back. Harry was sure that he was the only one who saw the way those hands were shaking. “It doesn’t need to be. I’ll offer you one more chance.”  
  
 _He hates this,_ Harry realized abruptly.  _And there’s no reason that he wouldn’t hate it, is there? He was Voldemort’s torturer because Voldemort forced him to be, and those memories must be welling up in him right now._  
  
That thought brought Harry to his feet. He could play the role of interrogator more naturally here, since he had the Auror training to do so and he was the one the witch had attacked. He stepped to Draco, picking up the Veritaserum as he did so, and tried to ignore the thought of what the other Aurors would say if they ever heard about this. He had already decided that what they thought didn’t matter, hadn’t he?  
  
“Last chance,” he told the prisoner. “I mean it. Not his last chance. Mine.”  
  
The witch looked up at him once more, eyes dull in a way that made Harry’s stomach want to turn inside out. But he remembered that she had looked more alert when she was working to kill him—and  _she_ certainly wouldn’t have wept if his eyes had lost every spark of life.  
  
He stepped towards her, drawing the stopper out of the vial. As he had thought might be the case, there was a small glass prod underneath it that captured a few drops of the potion and was meant for laying them on the tongue.  
  
She struggled against him, of course. But Harry had had some practice at this, mostly from forcing healing potions down the throats of people who had been put under the Imperius Curse not to want them. Veritaserum was a little more tricky, but he got at least three drops, and probably more, on her tongue at last, mostly by kneeling on her arms.  
  
Draco was staring at him, Harry saw as he straightened up, in a way that said he hadn’t known those things about Harry. Harry turned his back. They didn’t need to get along all the time, only well enough to have a working marriage.  
  
The witch was now struggling to spit out the Veritaserum. Harry took her throat in a light hand and massaged, and massaged again, until she swallowed, glaring at him all the while.  
  
That glare didn’t last long. Her head sagged to the side, and her eyes got that glaze in them that everyone who took Veritaserum had.  
  
Harry nodded. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Madeline Robbs.” The witch’s voice was low, passionless. Harry glanced once at Draco, and saw him nod confirmation that the Veritaserum was working, although his face was still averted.  _Well, with his background, I wouldn’t want to watch someone else torture a helpless victim, either,_ Harry thought.  
  
“Why did you come here?” Harry asked.  
  
“I was hired to kill you.”  
  
Harry nodded, slowly, stepping in front of her so that she would make eye contact with him and not Draco. “Me. Not Draco Malfoy, the heir to the Malfoy name and fortune? Me?”  
  
Draco’s hand landed solidly in the middle of his back, but Harry wasn’t sure why and didn’t dare take his eyes from Robbs’s to glance around. If Draco had something to say, then he could say it.  
  
But he remained silent, and the moment passed, and Harry could go on questioning Robbs without worrying too much about it.  
  
“You,” Robbs confirmed. “They wanted you dead because you stand in the way of someone else succeeding to the Malfoy title.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Who is they? Who hired you?”  
  
Robbs’s head moved oddly for a moment, and Harry’s fear that her employers might have put a curse on her to keep her from speaking the truth soared. He had known those curses to kill, and while he could reverse some of them if he moved quickly enough, that depended on knowing which spell it was. Not to mention that the countercurse sometimes damaged the victim’s brain permanently.  
  
But Robbs’s eyes and ears didn’t explode. Instead, she replied after a moment, as if searching for the answer in her own brain, “One of them is named Aurelius Shepherd.”  
  
Draco hissed behind him. Harry nodded. “And what about the others? Or did you not know?”  
  
“The others kept their faces hidden,” Robbs said. “They met me in a small, bleak room that I was only given the Apparition coordinates to once; when I tried to return to discuss a higher payment, there was nothing there, only a small house with dirt on the windowsills and a broken door that did not look as though anyone had lived there in years. But there were three of them. Shepherd was the one who paid me and showed his face, to ensure that I could trust them.”  
  
Draco hissed again, but although he obviously knew Shepherd, or at least some reason for that name to be significant to him, he still didn’t interrupt. Harry was the one who had to keep pushing ahead. “How much did they pay you?”  
  
“Two hundred Galleons.”  
  
“I suppose I should be glad they decided not to sell my life cheaply,” Harry said dryly. He had heard higher assassins’ fees, but not often. “And why did you accept the offer? Have you killed in the past?”  
  
“No. I was desperate.” Strange to hear the words in that soft, uninterested voice the Veritaserum seemed naturally to inflict on people. Harry had been under the truth potion several times, but he didn’t remember speaking like that; his voice seemed to have him to just give the only possible answers. “I had cousins who were Death Eaters, and the Ministry did not want to hear that I did not know anything about that.”  
  
Harry nodded. As he’d thought, Draco’s enemies would find their best assassins and adherents in the former Death Eaters, who would probably resent that Draco and his mother had managed to escape the taint of accusation and being sent to prison. “And why did Shepherd think that me being dead would open the way to him succeeding to the Malfoy estates?”  
  
“I do not know.”   
  
Harry heard a ripple or waver in her tone, and remembered that Veritaserum usually compelled literal answers to questions, so it wouldn’t do much good to ask that again if she really didn’t know. But he could push on a different matter. “You have your suspicions, don’t you? What were they?”  
  
“He said something about a demi-marriage when he thought I did not hear. I know what demi-marriages are. I know you made one.” Robbs also didn’t sound as though she wanted to use contractions. “I think that he thinks he could step into your place and demi-marry the current head of the Malfoy line.”  
  
Harry swallowed again, and this time he had to turn to Draco, partially because Draco was almost shoving him out of the way and he didn’t have much choice, but also because he wanted to see his face.  
  
Draco crouched down in front of Robbs, and his eyes were wide and his breathing so hurried that Harry put a hand on his shoulder in concern. Draco shrugged a little against him, never looking away from Robbs. “Did you notice a family resemblance between Shepherd and me?” he asked harshly.  
  
Robbs didn’t laugh at the question as Harry suspected she would have under normal circumstances; Veritaserum really did repress the emotions. She considered Draco with a dispassionate eye instead, and then nodded. “Yes. You both have blond hair and a chin that sticks out. And you both look as though you wish you had inherited the universe.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes and leaned back. Harry rubbed the middle of his back the way Draco had his when Robbs first mentioned Shepherd’s name, and asked, “Who is he?”  
  
Robbs obviously thought the question directed at her, and said, “I do not know.”  
  
“My fourth cousin,” Draco whispered. “His ancestor was a Malfoy woman several generations back who married a half-blood man named Shepherd. We never kept up the connection, but it’s possible that Shepherd has worked out he’s my nearest blood relative and thinks that  _he_ should have been the one I turned to in the demi-marriage.”  
  
“You could have,” Harry said, a bit bewildered that someone as traditional as Draco would have chosen Harry when he had a blood relative available. Hadn’t Draco said there were none? Or had he thought that Shepherd wasn’t near enough to count?  
  
Draco stared at him. Then he said, “Oh, I  _see_. You’re thinking in terms of blood. But Shepherd wouldn’t do. I wanted to marry for power and money, and that was part of the reason I chose you.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. Ron and Hermione might not believe it, but he found the terms almost endearing, now that he knew more about Draco. “All right. Do you think Shepherd is really that angry that you passed him over?”  
  
Draco snorted. “He has to know how little money or power I had left until you married me. No, he was perfectly content to wait. He probably thought that I would divorce you as soon as I was in a better position and retain control of your vaults and the magic you left behind through some complicated arrangement. But I would think that the way we work together in public probably made him nervous—the same way it did Blaise. Now he thinks he can kill you and I’ll have to take someone else as a partner, and he’ll step comfortably into that place as blood kin.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous,” Harry muttered.  
  
“It’s the way that a lot of pure-bloods thought until recently.” Draco’s gaze on him sharpened. “The way I probably would  _still_ think, except that I learned better when someone took the time to teach me.”  
  
Harry laid a hand on his arm and squeezed for a moment, then glanced at Robbs. “What do you think we should do with her?  _Obliviate_ her?”  
  
Draco’s smile vanished at once, and he turned back to Robbs. “Nothing with her yet. There are more questions I have to ask her, especially concerning that attack with the dragon. I want to know whether Shepherd is really well-connected enough to try that. If he is, he probably wouldn’t need my money. But then, I’m also surprised he would have enough money to pay that much in an assassin’s fee.”  
  
Harry nodded, then hesitated. There was something he felt he had to say.  
  
“You know…” he began, and Draco looked back at him again. “If you  _did_ want to divorce me and marry someone better-suited to the position—”  
  
“Shut up,  _Malfoy_ ,” Draco said, eyes burning with a savage light. “I know  _exactly_ what I want, and you’re it.”  
  
Harry had to shut his eyes for a few seconds when Draco began questioning Robbs, and not for any of the reasons he would have thought he’d have to.


	27. Know Thine Enemy

“She says she doesn’t know anything more. But there’s no doubt that the attack on us with the dragon was definitely Shepherd.”  
  
Harry glanced up from the other side of the table, where he had been picking steadily at his food. Draco intended to keep an eye on that. When Harry didn’t have an appetite for the luxuries that Ossy could offer him, then Draco knew something had upset his stomach, his mind, or both. Maybe his conscience, after his effective torture of Robbs earlier.  
  
Draco pushed away the memory of how much that had upset his  _own_ stomach. They would have learned nothing without the Veritaserum. Whether she feared them, Shepherd, or the justice they might bring her to if she confessed anything, Robbs would have kept her mouth shut through all their threats.  
  
 _Harry is good at bringing threats to life._  
  
He was, and Draco had married him partially for that—or in consequence of that. He had made his threat to the Dementors’ ghosts real, in a way that no one else could have, or would have dared, and so Draco’s life had flown to pieces, and this marriage had risen from the ashes.  
  
 _If I think about all the things we owe each other and whether I should be more happy or frightened to have him in my life, I will go mad._ Draco leaned forwards and clapped his hands. Harry looked up from his mostly untouched plate in response, blinking.  
  
“So,” Draco said, his eyes never moving from Harry’s face. “I want to know how you think we should fight these enemies.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and put the plate off to one side. Ossy appeared next to him and glared at him. Harry resisted the glare, or ignored it, which made Draco stare at him all the more. His  _father_  had responded when Ossy glared like that, because one had no choice. But Harry simply said, “First, I want to know more about this connection between Shepherd and the attack. How could he have enough money to hire a dragon, or people capable of handling a dragon, and an assassin, but still need your vaults?”  
  
Draco smiled thinly. “An interesting question, and one that Robbs wasn’t able to provide the answer to. But I think they’re likely people that Shepherd owes money to himself, willing to grasp at straws rather than give up any chance of payment on the debts. Shepherd’s probably promised them—”  
  
“That he can pay them when he comes into the Malfoy estates,” Harry said, nodding. “Yes, I’ve investigated several crimes where something like that was the motive.” Draco ignored the frisson of feeling that hearing Harry talk about his Auror career brought him. He had promised to be reasonable. “But it still seems odd to me that he would have tried to kill  _me._ Wouldn’t he automatically become the heir to the estates if you were dead? Why not target you?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “The status of my heir—if you and I both died—is unclear.” He paused, and watched Harry blink a moment and absorb, again, that he was the Malfoy heir. Draco wondered wearily how many repetitions it would take for Harry to understand that instinctively. “It  _might_ go to Shepherd, but there are other Malfoy relatives, some of whom might have forgotten all about that connection. The Ministry would most likely seize the estate and hold it in trust, and then manage to dispose of it in their own way.”  
  
“Your mother has no claim,” Harry murmured.  
  
Draco shook his head again. “To nothing except whatever property and money she brought into the marriage. She’s not a Malfoy by blood, but more than that, her status as the heir’s spouse was effectively ended when my father went to prison. I’m the head of the family, and you are my heir—”  
  
“Because of the adoption-like way the demi-marriage works,” Harry said, nodding thoughtfully. Draco smiled, glad that Harry didn’t require an explanation as to why he could be an heir of the family and Narcissa couldn’t. “All right. So he should have tried to kill you  _before_ you got married, if he was going to.”  
  
“Yes.” Draco leaned back, gaze fixed on Harry. “The succession of the family is assured now, even if I die childless, or simply die. You’re my heir.”  
  
Harry ducked his head as though he didn’t know whether he wanted to flinch or flush in embarrassment. Then he said, “So. All right. So that was probably Shepherd. Did she give you any information that would lead you to the people who stabbed you at the Ministry party?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I think we were right before, and they are two separate sets of enemies, who perhaps want different things, not working together. That would make sense in that Shepherd wanted to kill you and whoever stabbed me at the party wanted to kill me.” He waited only until Harry nodded before he continued smoothly, “And now I want you to explain to me why you aren’t eating.”  
  
Harry blinked at him, then at his plate, and finally seemed to notice Ossy, who hadn’t moved or changed his glare in the time they’d been talking. He cleared his throat and said, “I thought—I thought you knew.”  
  
“Amazing as I am, Harry, I cannot read your mind.” Draco let himself lean back against his chair and relax, to show Harry that he didn’t want to pressure him. But he remained looking at him.  
  
Harry sighed. “All right. I know that one reason you didn’t want to force Veritaserum down Robbs’s throat was that Voldemort forced you to torture people during the war.”  
  
Draco stared at him. Then he said, “You sound very confident about the reasons for my reaction.”  
  
“Your face looked the way it did when I saw you in the visions that my scar gave me,” Harry said, putting his hand up to his forehead, and then lowering it again in confusion, perhaps because he had felt the dragon instead of the lightning bolt. “And I saw a similar memory in the demi-marriage ritual.”  
  
Draco felt as though someone had given him a blow to the stomach. He had never anticipated that that particular secret would come out.  
  
Or perhaps he had never anticipated that it would and the person who knew it would have a reaction other than laughing or condemning him for cowardice. Harry sat there and looked at him steadily with eyes full of compassion. Draco would have bolted out of the room if Blaise had known.  
  
 _But Harry is not Blaise. I think he amply proved that in the Ministry yesterday._  
  
Draco cleared his throat, because the conversation would go nowhere until he did, and then said, “And what about it? You took over and poured the potion down her throat so I didn’t have to. That’s the kind of thing spouses in a working marriage should do for each other, I think.”  
  
Harry took a breath as though about to plunge into deep water. “I know you probably dislike me more than you did, or—or despise me, or something, because I showed that I  _could_ commit that kind of torture.”  
  
Draco did some more staring. Then he said, “What have I done to make you think so?”  
  
“The way you looked at me after I did the forcing,” Harry said. “And after that. You were surprised I had that in me, and maybe you would have been happier if you’d never known.” He was talking to his hands in a monotone. “I’m sorry, Draco. I just think that we really  _did_ need to know the information she was concealing, and there was no way other than the Veritaserum to know that for sure. And she never would have taken it of her own free will.”  
  
Draco stood up. Harry watched him with wide eyes.  
  
Draco walked around the table. Harry looked as though he wished he were somewhere else.  
  
Draco placed his hands on Harry’s shoulders, leaned into his face, and said gently, “Listen, you idiot. I’m  _grateful_ that you could do what I couldn’t. You’re right in everything you said. It startled me that you could be that forceful, but I told you I know what I want, and I do. That’s you.”  
  
*  
  
Harry wanted to close his eyes and sink deeper into sleep. This felt like a wonderful dream he should never wake up from, because nothing would ever be as good again.  
  
And then he blushed, because why was he thinking that kind of thing about  _Draco?_  
  
Draco’s hands moved to his cheeks, and stroked up and down. Draco was still staring at him from too close, and for some reason it felt far more intimate than it should have, as though Harry didn’t have to just shut his eyes and turn away in order to end it. Harry hung his head and swallowed.  
  
“I want to know what you’re thinking,” Draco said quietly. “I  _did_ say this before, and you act as though this is the first time. So what are you thinking, Harry?” Harry told himself that he imagined the small pause between the last word and his name, as well as the way that Draco’s hand moved briefly to the back of his neck, as though to hold him in place.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. There was something preying on his mind, and he hoped Draco would listen to it instead of reacting with immediate outrage, because it was the only thing he had to offer. His confused, wordless emotions at the moment were beyond even him. “I just—I think that you should know Ron persuaded me to stand up against the Ministry.”  
  
Draco froze for a moment. But he didn’t take his hands away, or his eyes, and Harry shivered as Draco’s hands stroked up and down again. “How did he do that?” Draco asked. “By not being me?”  
  
Harry shook his head, and that dislodged Draco’s hands a little, but not enough to give Harry back his breath. “Not—exactly,” Harry whispered. “He didn’t talk about the danger he thought I would have endured. He talked about the anger that he’d had to handle as my partner.”  
  
Draco snorted, but  _still_ didn’t move away, although Harry thought the stroking of his hands was more mindless than anything now, not something he was thinking about. “He gave you someone to protect.”  
  
Harry lifted his eyebrows and retreated to the safe ground of a row they’d probably have forever. “That’s part of the reason I want to be an Auror, too. Some of it might come from a desire to please people and reconcile them to my fame, but not all of it.”  
  
“I do realize that,” Draco said, and then repeated it, as if he thought one speaking of it might not be enough to seal it in Harry’s mind. “I do realize that, Harry.”  
  
Harry was getting increasingly breathless, and he was sure that he would do something stupid if he had to remain near Draco much longer. He stood up and turned his back, breaking the hold, forcing his chair away. Ossy hopped to the side so Harry could see his glare still, but Harry wasn’t concerned with him right now.  
  
“Good,” Harry said over his shoulder. “Ron suggested a speech, and I think it should be that. But I’ll wait until after you decide what you want to do about Shepherd, of course. It might introduce lots of chaos right now just where we don’t want it, to try and fight a war on two fronts at the same time.”  
  
Draco said nothing. Harry thought for a moment he had left the room.  
  
Then footsteps sounded, and Draco came up and took hold of his waist the way he had when he was teaching Harry to dance, turning him around again. “You looked afraid just now,” Draco said. “You never do that. Why?”  
  
“Because it’s what people expect,” Harry snapped, and damn it, he could feel his heart getting all tangled up. He tried to move away.  
  
“I didn’t mean that,” Draco said, his voice adopting a quiet staccato that gave a very good picture of his feelings. “And you know it. I wanted to know why you were afraid just now.”  
  
 _Damn it._  Harry reached up as though he could brush Draco’s hand away from his wrist, but Draco only caught his other hand, and turned it over, and held it, and tugged him closer.  
  
“You don’t run away,” Draco repeated softly. “I know you do other things as an Auror, but you’ve also always charged into danger, and told me that you didn’t want to give it up when I wanted you to. So what is  _this_? What can I do to you that dozens of Dark wizards and torturers haven’t managed?” He leaned in until Harry felt as though he had never stood in a posture more intimate with anyone. “What truth frightens you here?”  
  
Harry stiffened his spine. He didn’t like to be hurt for the sake of pain, that much was true, and he wondered if Draco knew it. And he also wondered if Draco would  _care_ , or if he would go ahead and press the matter, if he knew what was really boiling beneath Harry’s calm exterior.  
  
 _Only one way to find out._  
  
Harry locked eyes with him, and said, “When you touched me just now, the way you looked at me and what you said right before  _you_  started questioning Robbs, made me think for a moment I was in danger of thinking of this as a conventional marriage. One where I could lose my heart, and lose myself to you, and want to be in your bed, even.”  
  
He broke the hold Draco had on his wrists without trouble, this time, because Draco was staring at him, wide-eyed and breathless, as if he wouldn’t have believed that Harry would dare to speak such words. Then he turned away and went quietly out of the room.  
  
Ossy met him on the stairs with a plate full of food. Harry ignored him, for the first time, and climbed on past. Ossy appeared again at the top, this time with a cake on the tray instead of the soup and chicken he had tried to present Harry with before.  
  
Harry hesitated. Ossy leaned forwards, and although his expression might have been enough to sour the cake, there was also a distinctly pleading look that made Harry sigh and use the knife and fork also on the tray to cut a piece of the cake.  
  
Ossy had little plates, too, and Harry took up his piece and wandered into the bedroom. The chocolate melted between his teeth, and the delicate flaking of the cake itself made him close his eyes and lean back on his bed. Chocolate cake might not be the best remedy for a (potentially) broken heart, but it was pretty bloody close.  
  
*  
  
 _He said…he said…_  
  
Draco stood there in the middle of the dining room and stared after Harry for so long that his legs began to ache. He sat down in his chair and stared at the untouched food on the other side of the table as a substitute for staring after Harry the way he wanted to.  
  
 _I never knew._  
  
But how should he have? He was the one who had requested this marriage, the one who had drawn Harry into it against his will. He had thought they might achieve a position of master and servant at first, and then discovered, when Harry enthusiastically began obeying him and locking his emotions away, how little tolerance he himself had for such a position. Then he had thought a working marriage, like some of the marriages of convenience that his ancestors’ books told him about, would be the best they could have.  
  
But now…  
  
 _I could—I could want him. And I can see how he thought I did, with what I said to him after he interrogated Robbs. That he was what I wanted. Maybe that made him think about things he wouldn’t have thought about otherwise._  
  
Draco licked his lips. He sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling this time, since the other side of the table had rather lost its charm. His heart was beating fast, and Harry was right; being that close to him, looking into his eyes, was bound to stir up emotions, whether or not Draco wanted that to happen.   
  
 _These emotions, though?_  
  
Draco made a little shoving motion with his right hand. Yes,  _these_ emotions. Harry was supporting him, sticking up for him. He had understood without being told that Draco did  _not_ want to interrogate Robbs, that it came too close to what he had endured during the war. And he had taken over despite what he had feared being good at torture would do to Draco’s perceptions of him.  
  
Those were not, perhaps, traits to inspire immediate, and especially passionate, love. But they were the kind of traits that Draco might have looked for in a partner, not simply a demi-spouse.  
  
 _He was afraid. Afraid that I would mock him, maybe, or just that I would withdraw. Afraid that I would be disgusted or not return things and turn my head aside and that would ruin what we have._  
  
Draco didn’t want to mock him. He wasn’t disgusted. He didn’t think they would ruin what they had, this comfortable partnership that meant he knew when Harry was in danger and he was gaining back some of what he had lost and he could touch him freely. He didn’t want to withdraw, either.  
  
 _But as long as I sit down here thinking that, and Harry’s upstairs thinking something different, then we won’t have a meeting of the minds._  
  
 _Do I want him? Perhaps it’s time to go up and tell him that._  
  
*  
  
Harry finished the last crumb of his chocolate cake, and set the plate on the table beside his bed. At least, he meant to. The plate had barely touched the table’s surface when Ossy appeared, grabbed it, and vanished again.  
  
Harry grunted and leaned back on his pillows. He was a little bit ashamed of what he had done earlier, really. Running from Draco was stupid, and Draco was the kind of person who would never press Harry for more than he was giving right now. Why should he? Someday, they would be divorced, and both of them would be free to marry someone else. Draco would probably be eager to do so, because he would want heirs of his own blood, Malfoys who could inherit the properties because of something other than the same name.  
  
Someone knocked on his door. Harry blinked again. Ossy had just been here, Affy was probably with Narcissa, and Narcissa surely wouldn’t be up and walking around yet. But that seemed easier to believe than that Draco would come talk to him, after what had happened in the dining room.  
  
The knock repeated, and it was brisk and annoyed, even if the door to the room  _was_ Harry’s as much as any other Malfoy’s, the way Ossy had taught him. Harry licked his lips, sat up, and said, “Come in.”  
  
Draco stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, pressing his back against it as though he expected to be interrupted. His eyes shone directly at Harry, who suddenly felt as if he hadn’t eaten the cake at all. There was the same craving in his stomach that he had identified as hunger before.  
  
 _But hunger for what?_  
  
This couldn’t be happening, though. Not  _really_. As far as Harry knew, he had never experienced attraction towards Draco before they were married, and although he had seen him naked in the demi-marriage rituals, he hadn’t wanted to touch him the way he wanted to now, sliding his hand over smooth skin and looking Draco in the eyes to make sure that he enjoyed it.  
  
Besides. Even if he felt that way, there was no guarantee Draco would. He had probably come to clarify something else, something that would make Harry’s fears look laughable. So Harry tried to look alert and intelligent, and not flinch when Draco took a step towards him.  
  
“Harry,” Draco said gently, and the sound rippled up and down Harry’s spine and made him feel just the way he had when Draco was holding his hands and looking into his eyes. “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”  
  
 _It’s okay, just a strategy meeting,_ Harry told himself as his stomach plunged again like a dove hit by a hawk. That reaction made no sense. He should be  _relieved_ it was a strategy meeting, not the other way around. He nodded. “About the Ministry?”  
  
Draco blinked. Then he said, “ _No_ , you idiot. About what we both know perfectly well happened down there in the dining room.”  
  
Harry realized he was breathing far more harshly than he had a right to, and wanted to fling his hands up to keep Draco away. He was lounging in bed, too, while Draco was standing up, but if Draco came closer and leaned over him and perhaps pinned Harry to the pillow, which he could probably do with nothing more than his eyes—  
  
 _No_. Harry stood up and climbed off the bed. “You know now why I was afraid,” he said, his voice strained and snapping. “What more do we need to discuss?”  
  
“Because you never thought I might return the feelings, or have some of the same ones,” Draco said, taking a step towards him. “But I do.”  
  
“But what about getting married to someone else someday?” Harry asked, backing away and nearly sitting down on the bed again as it slammed into the back of his knees. He swallowed, and swallowed again, but  _nothing_ was going to reduce the dryness in his throat, or the hunger in the bottom of his stomach. “I mean, someone who can give you children?”  
  
“There are other ways to get an heir,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “I’ve already experienced one of them.” He moved closer.  
  
“You can’t know what you’re saying.” Harry snapped out the words, because that was the only thing that could save Draco from making a horrible mistake. He  _wasn’t thinking_. He didn’t want to stay married to Harry forever. At least, he wouldn’t if he really thought about it. And he had said that the demi-marriage could be annulled easily after five years if they didn’t sleep together. If they did…  
“You look afraid again,” Draco murmured provocatively. “And as much as I love the way you look in all situations, in all emotions, I’d think that particular one is one that you want to stop.”  
  
Harry glared at him and jerked his chin up. “I don’t  _mean_ to look afraid. I just think this is an action that you should take some more time to think about before you do it. That’s all.”  
  
“That’s all?” Draco asked, his eyes widening a little, although Harry didn’t see what he’d said that was so amazing.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said.  
  
“Then I’ve thought,” Draco said. “And I want to see what happens, at least, when I do this.”  
  
He reached out, and put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and brought his mouth gently to Harry’s.


	28. Learning By Experience

Harry’s mouth was warm.  
  
There was no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be, really, but Draco found that he wanted to clench his hands in Harry’s hair and haul his head down anyway, to get more of the taste and more of the experience. His hands pressed deeper into Harry’s scalp, his fingers teasing, gently massaging, and he took a step forwards, pushing Harry back towards the bed. He didn’t really think about it.   
  
Harry’s mouth made it hard to think; that was another good way to characterize it.  
  
“Wait,” Harry said, and hovered in front of Draco for a moment before he moved away. His eyes were bright, dazed, but comprehension was surfacing all too fast. Draco sighed, but let him go. In the end, he didn’t want Harry making decisions to be with him just out of stupid arousal. He wanted the full, the willing surrender.  
  
 _That’s the kind of surrender I would have been satisfied with, if he’d been able to bring himself to give it to me. I want him, I want him to like being with me, but it has to be of his own free will, or it’s not the real prize.  
  
And I _want  _the real prize._  
  
“There are still excellent reasons not to do this,” Harry said, raising one cautioning hand when Draco would have taken a step nearer to him. “I mean it. I mean—you said that we basically had to keep the demi-marriage sexless.” He flushed when he spoke that last word, but his gaze was firm, and Draco thought he could grow to like the sight of Harry’s embarrassment quite as much as his normal demeanor. “If we don’t do that, we can’t get divorced. And you do want to get divorced, right? Not be married to me for the rest of your life?”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. The sight of Harry was bloody distracting, and Harry was right about one thing, if not the others: he needed to make his decisions as the head of the Malfoy family, and not someone in his twenties controlled by his hormones.  
  
“I want to have heirs someday, that’s true,” he said, working his way through the desires that boiled in the back of his head, dimmed and sat on by the more immediate ones that his days with Harry had given him. “And I want to keep the family safe and secure. I want to defeat these enemies. I want to ensure that the Malfoys will continue after my death.”  
  
“Well, then.” Harry’s voice was gentle. “This isn’t the way to do that. You want children, to make sure the family is safe. And you want  _me_ to have children, because if I don’t, that’s one line of inheritance cut off.”  
  
Draco opened his eyes and stared at him. “You sound as though it isn’t your family, too,” he said, speaking the first words that came into his head, but he had meditated so much on his own desires just now that he was pretty sure they were true. “It is.”  
  
Harry blinked and moved a hand through his hair. “That still doesn’t lessen the force of my argument that it would be better to have two male heirs producing children than just one. More secure, anyway.”  
  
“But your desires for the future of the family matter, too,” Draco said. “Do  _you_  want to stay married to me? Do you want to find some way around the issue of heirs rather than getting divorced and then married again?”  
  
Harry fell back a step. Draco watched him, cocking his head. “That bothers you, don’t you?” he asked quietly. “Being asked to make decisions for your family?”  
  
Harry took a quick breath. “You’re still the head of the Malfoys,” he said. “You’re still the one who has to make the real choices, the one whose choices count. I’m—I don’t know. I think I only have the power that you did when your father was the head of the family.”  
  
“What I thought and did was still immensely important to my family,” Draco pointed out. “Otherwise, my father wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to make sure that I had good marks in school and thought and said all the right things.” He edged closer to Harry again. “You think of yourself as powerless? You’re not. But you’re not used to being responsible for other people when it’s not a case of immediate life-and-death. I see.”  
  
“It’s not that,” Harry said, and sat down on the bed. Draco sat beside him. Harry started a little, but buried his head in his fingers and remained still, in a thinking pose. Draco didn’t say all he was thinking, which was that hiding his face was just as much a means of running away as some of the other things Harry could have done. “It’s that—I’m not used to having a family, and I think I’ll fuck this up.”  
  
“You told me the Weasleys were like your family,” Draco pointed out.  
  
Harry nodded, looking down still. “But they don’t have the same kind of connections and ties and obligations to me that you do. What happens if I make another mistake like the one that deprived your mother of her health in the first place?”  
  
“Thinking about children seems unlikely to do that,” Draco pointed out, and put his hand on Harry’s knee. “As does thinking about having sex with me.”  
  
Harry swallowed and met his eyes. “But we still have to think about what will happen if we have sex in the demi-marriage. It’ll make it harder to dissolve.”  
  
Draco laughed gently. “Everyone around us, except perhaps my mother and your friends, already thinks we’re fucking. And dissolving the demi-marriage is as much a matter of private law and ritual as the wedding ritual itself was. I think you’ll find that we need to be concerned about ourselves before anyone else.” He dug his hands into Harry’s hair again, and this time, he hung on when Harry would have moved away. He had already noticed how being close to him affected Harry’s breathing and blushing; time to see if it affected other things as well.  
  
Harry swallowed, his throat jumping. “I don’t know.”  
  
“I think you want to,” Draco said softly. “I said that we needn’t sleep together when we began the demi-marriage because I was concerned you would think of it as a requirement of the marriage, and it isn’t. But if we  _want_ to, that’s a different matter, isn’t it?” He edged closer, and Harry gave a helpless sound that might have been either snort or laugh.  
  
“It does seem that I’m born sometimes to get close to surprising people,” he said, and then leaned in and kissed Draco before he could ask what that meant. Draco was glad enough of the kissing not to care right now, though. He looped an arm around Harry’s waist, and kissed back.  
  
*  
  
Harry was drowning, but in the good way.  
  
This was Draco, whose face he had seen stripped down to its barest essentials in the demi-marriage ritual. Draco, who had begged him to go forwards with the ritual when the mist was consuming them, and managed to persuade him. Draco, whom Harry had defended and who had let Harry do it instead of arguing all the time. And the man who had given him back himself when Harry might have tried to shut down all his emotions and live mindless for the next five years of his life.  
  
Of course, this was also Draco, who had made hours of his childhood a torment and had taken Harry from his friends and family into the marriage in the first place. But Harry was opening his arms and his lips to him anyway.  
  
 _And your legs?_  
  
The crude thought made Harry flush, but then Draco’s lips and tongue moved in insistently, and Harry was too involved in kissing back to think a lot.  
  
It had been a while since he’d done this, but he remembered how. He remembered how to brush someone’s cheeks and chin with neat little motions of his hands, and he liked the way it made Draco gasp and shudder. And he hadn’t forgotten the consuming need to be close, either, the way he shifted his groin back and forth and tried to move forwards at the same time.  
  
This time, his erection brushed Draco’s.  
  
Harry broke the kiss again and buried his head in Draco’s shoulder, panting. Draco brushed Harry’s hair away from the side of his neck and kissed him there, delicately, exquisitely.  
  
“That frightens you, doesn’t it?” he murmured. “Because you haven’t done it before, and anything is scary until you’ve done it once.”  
  
“I’m  _not_ frightened,” Harry snapped, and Draco’s hands tightened on his shoulders until Harry thought they would squeeze the bone right out of the skin. “Not—not in the same way that you understand fear or would expect me to be, anyway,” he mumbled. “Not that way.”  
  
“Then tell me what way.” Draco’s arms were still around him, cradling him, holding him close.  
  
“I just don’t know what to do with myself when I feel you,” Harry said, and that was closer to the truth.   
  
“Then don’t do anything special,” Draco murmured, and moved back to his mouth again. “Let  _me_  do it, and you can lie there and watch me and feel if you want. I’ll hardly mind.” His eyes were wide, his panting breath covering Harry’s mouth with warmth. For some reason, this really excited him.  
  
Harry blinked, then lay back slowly on his pillows, the way he had when he was eating the chocolate cake. Draco followed him down, and kissed him again, and then began to slip his shirt down his shoulders. Harry shuddered, but kept watching Draco, because he thought closing his eyes right now would make the sensations even sharper, and he wasn’t sure if he could deal with that.  
  
Draco’s smile was bright and small and delighted. He got Harry’s shoulders bare and began to kiss them, and Harry arched up, and moaned, and grabbed the back of Draco’s head. He wasn’t made to be passive after all, it seemed, and he kissed Draco on the mouth and rolled them over so that he could pin him down in turn.  
  
Draco laughed up at him, the delight in his smile escaping through the sound. “So much for not knowing how to do anything special,” he said.  
  
“Shut up,” Harry told him, and kissed  _his_ shoulder in retaliation. Draco groaned at that, the kind of full-throated, hearty groan Harry hadn’t heard from him before except when he was injured, and stretched his arms out. Harry rolled on top of him and kissed him again, and again, and again, and again, until he was light-headed and Draco looked as if he would float away.  
  
His skin was delicious.  
  
Harry got Draco’s shirt completely unbuttoned, and licked a place where a dark bruise lingered before he could stop himself. Draco gasped, but it didn’t seem to be a bad gasp, so Harry did it again. Draco hummed beneath his breath and managed to bring his hands into play, stroking the back of Harry’s neck and further down, so that Harry shuddered and got distracted, and then Draco was on top again. Harry panted at him, afraid for a minute they would run out of bed, but then he remembered how big the bed was in this room, and dismissed the fear.  
  
“You’re very good,” Draco told him, head bowed and eyes as bright as a forest fire. “But I really think  _I_ want a turn.”  
  
Before Harry could point out that he’d had a turn just a minute ago, Draco’s hand dipped under his shirt, and yanked it the rest of the way off. Then he began to stroke Harry’s chest with both his hands, palms down, flat, warm, heavy, like he was giving Harry a massage. Harry sighed and spread his legs without thinking about it.  
  
“You really would give me everything, wouldn’t you?” Draco whispered, and his voice was so choked that Harry looked up sharply. But Draco was watching him, not gasping for breath, and he looked—  
  
He looked as though he was really fucking turned on, was what he looked. Harry grinned and spoke before he thought. That had to happen sometimes, and he’d actually been pretty good about his marriage with Draco so far.  
  
“That makes you want to fuck?” he muttered, running his fingers up Draco’s arm for a minute, to see if it made him falter. It did. Draco’s eyes shut and his hands lost their place on Harry’s chest for a second, wandering, mapping territory that wasn’t there. Harry couldn’t help the huskiness to his breath when he spoke next. “The thought of me giving up, giving it up to you? That makes you hard?”  
  
Draco abruptly twisted and slammed him fast to the bed, holding Harry’s wrists on the pillow now, his eyes wide and his breath coming so hard that he’d start panting in a minute. He leaned down and said into Harry’s face, his gaze wild and raw and blazing, “Yes.”  
  
Harry blinked. Then, going with the same impulse that had made him say that in the first place, he spread his legs.  
  
Draco slammed into him again, but this time with his hips and his groin, rutting, his eyes rolling back in his head and his breath escaping him in a series of rapid grunts. Harry lifted his hips and rolled them right back, back and forth and up and down, but made sure never to strain against the hold that Draco had on his wrists.  
  
That might make Draco less hot, and they couldn’t have  _that_.  
  
He was carrying Draco higher and higher, Harry could see that. His head was hanging and his hips were thrusting, and his face was so  _red._ Sweat rolled down his cheeks, and maybe some tears. His mouth was open and shining.  
  
Harry tried to rear up to kiss him, and Draco’s eyes flew open again. He lay down on top of Harry as if to keep him from moving, and stared into his face.  
  
Harry spread his legs wide, giving in, surrendering, letting Draco  _see_ that was what he was doing, and then wrapped his legs around Draco’s hips, and tugged him forwards against him. “More,” he muttered.  
  
Draco almost screamed, and slammed and slammed and slammed him. Harry arched his head and came before he thought about it, with a cry that probably sounded ugly, compared to the beautiful sounds Draco was making.  
  
But Draco came in his pants, too, and then reached out and curved his hands as hard around Harry’s ribs as he could, holding him.  _Maybe he would like them better if they were broken and I couldn’t move anywhere,_ Harry thought, blinking at him, his own mouth hanging open.  
  
Then Draco filled Harry’s mouth with his tongue, and it was hard to think. Harry settled for kissing, and his fingers flexed against the pillow the way he would have liked to flex them in Draco’s hair, given the chance. But it was pretty clear Draco wasn’t about to let him go right now.  
  
 _Not that I mind. And that’s the weirdest thing, that I don’t mind._  
  
*  
  
 _Mine._  
  
The word swam through Draco’s head, bright and bold red against a background of crimson and gold. Crimson and gold, Gryffindor colors, not that that mattered. Draco could feel the astonished pleasure washing through him, and the still keen and  _piercing_ adrenaline rush he’d felt when Harry willingly gave in to him. It was what he had wanted at the beginning of this marriage, but he hadn’t been thinking about sex then. He really hadn’t. It was just—it was just—  
  
He must have wanted Harry Potter to surrender for a good long time without knowing about it.  
  
Well, so had lots of people. But Draco was the one he’d chosen to do it for.  
  
He let Harry up at last, combing Harry’s hair back for him and smiling at him. He wanted to ask if that was really the most intense thing Harry had ever felt, the way it had been for Draco, but he was afraid of the way the words might sound. He bit his lip instead, and was silent.  
  
Harry wasn’t.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, grinning at Draco. “I might still have my doubts about whether we should have done this for the demi-marriage, but you’ve gone a long way to settling them.” He stretched his neck up and kissed Draco again, and this time, his tongue was the one forcing its way into Draco’s mouth, then settling down to play lazily.  
  
Draco stroked Harry’s wrist, and thought about the way he’d had it pinned to the pillow such a short time ago. Harry had given him a gift, and Draco was going to think about that, and remember it, the next time they had an argument about something stupid. Harry had given him a gift that no one could take back. Draco spread his fingers apart, and played with them, and thought about that.  
  
“What are you thinking?”  
  
Harry’s voice was drowsy. Draco grinned at him and spread his fingers apart further, stroking the webs between them, rolling so that Harry could breathe a little but couldn’t easily rise from the bed. “So you’re the stereotype of the man who always falls asleep right after sex.”  
  
Harry yawned. “I don’t know about  _always,_ but it’s pretty common.” Then, as Draco was wishing he hadn’t said anything because that was making him think about all the other people Harry had had sex with, Harry rolled to the side and flung his leg over Draco’s hips. “Thank you for a really good time,” he whispered, and closed his eyes, and was gone into sleep before Draco could think of something else to ask.  
  
Draco framed Harry’s ribs with his hands again, holding him close, caressing up and down on the delicate skin softly, so as not to wake Harry. Harry snorted at him and settled further into the pillows, though. Draco shifted to lie more on top of him, then decided that wasn’t comfortable with the way Harry’s bony hips were poking him, and rolled off again.  
  
Only then did he remember to cast the Cleaning Charm that removed the stickiness from their groins. He always would have remembered it before, the rare times that he’d been excited enough to come in his pants with someone else.  
  
Draco leaned his head on the pillow beside Harry’s, and watched the flutter of his eyes behind the eyelids, and touched his cheek now and then when he thought he could get away with it. Harry’s head rolled towards him, and Draco tensed. Harry didn’t wake up, though. Instead, his mouth sighed open and he lay there. Draco touched a finger to his lips.  
  
Harry sighed, and was still.  
  
Draco laid down his head beside Harry and closed his eyes. He thought he could rest content, now, with Harry his and so much better, so much more, than Draco had thought this marriage could be at first.  
  
 _The things he does of his own free will are the best things._  
  
*  
  
Harry came awake with what felt like unnatural speed, blinking and shaking his head, but he understood when he saw Draco asleep beside him. Memory returned, then, and the fact that he had woken up with a plan in his head that might take care of some of their enemies was rendered a bit irrelevant. He stroked Draco’s hair and cheek and learned the shape of his shoulder before Draco turned lazily towards him, stretching, and woke into awareness.  
  
His eyes were still lazy, and so heat-filled that Harry swallowed. Draco drew him in for a kiss before he said anything, and licked at his lips before he pulled back.  
  
“Morning,” he whispered. He looked around Harry’s bedroom. “Do you want to keep this? Because it would probably make more sense for us to share a bed, now.”  
  
“I want to keep this, yes,” Harry said dryly. “Since you probably won’t actually be demolishing this part of the Manor, and sometimes we’ll argue, so a bedroom to escape to that’s only my own would be nice.”  
  
Draco stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed with a faint snort and a shake of his head. “All right,” he said. “But you’re thinking about something—something that makes your eyes light up like that. What is it?”  
  
Harry kissed him, for the sheer pleasure of watching  _Draco’s_ eyes light up and delaying the confession just a bit longer, and then pulled back again. “I’ve thought of a way that we can hopefully get rid of Shepherd, or at least expose some more of the people whose strings he’s pulling,” he said. “And also make that speech Ron advised me to, where I challenge the Ministry to say what they really feel about me.”  
  
Draco’s eyes were wide and arrested, looking up at him. “You speak as though I’ve already agreed,” he said. “And I don’t want to agree to anything that puts you in danger.”  
  
Harry shook his head, holding onto his temper this time. “As long as people like Robbs keep coming after me, I’ll be in danger,” he said. “The best thing we can do is to carry the challenge to them, instead of running and hiding. I want you to come with me, but I’ll do it without you if I have to. I just don’t want to,” he added quietly, and ran his hand up Draco’s leg, and waited for his assent.  
  
“You’ll explain this to me before we do it,” Draco said, as slowly as though he was reading a list of the consequences and couldn’t see the end.  
  
Harry nodded. “I really do need your cooperation to pull it off, and it would help a lot if you helped me.”  
  
Draco snorted gently. Then he said, “And you promise that it doesn’t put you in any more danger than you are already?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Someone might attack me the moment they hear me speaking against the Ministry. Or Shepherd might send someone else the minute he realizes that Robbs didn’t succeed. I can’t promise I’ll be safe.”  
  
“I want you safe,” Draco said. “And not just because you’re the family’s strongest asset at the moment, although that’s a part of it.”  
  
Harry met Draco’s eyes and nodded, acknowledging all that had changed between them. “All right,” he said quietly. “I promise that I won’t take any extraordinary risks. In return, you have to promise me the same thing—even risks that you might take because you think I’m in danger. Can you actually do that?”  
  
Draco gave him a bright, arrogant smile, and leaned back on his elbow. “Of course,” he said, and pinched a strand of Harry’s hair. “So, what  _is_ this famous plan?”  
  
Harry kissed the palm of Draco’s hand before he replied, and decided that, after all, putting the demi-marriage in danger was worth it.


	29. What the Daring May Do

Harry paused outside the Atrium and shut his eyes, gathering his strength in a single long, cold moment and movement, the coiling power pulling from his stomach.  
  
 _I was the one who came up with this plan. I shouldn't even have told Draco about it if I didn't intend to go through with it._  
  
The thought of Draco made him open his eyes and walk forwards. What he couldn't do for himself, he could do for someone depending on him.  
  
 _For your husband. For your lover._  
  
And that was the kind of thing he could think about later. Right now, the full might and force of his enemies was awaiting him.  
  
The Atrium had never seemed like a particularly friendly place to Harry, though part of that undoubtedly came from the memories he had of battle there, and the simpering smiles of the faces of the new Fountain statue they'd put up after the war. But the Atrium of the past was a haven of cool, comfort, and calm compared to the one that awaited him now. A crowd of hostile eye from every direction tried to fill him full of invisible arrows. Aurors, secretaries, officials with no official rank, Ministry lackeys, and even a few Unspeakables watched, and leaned forwards, their posture telling him clearly that they had only come to watch him being conquered.  
  
And off to the side were his friends, Hermione with her glance just as hard as the others but because of anxiety rather than anger, and Ron with his eyes eager and his fists clenched.  
  
 _Someone else has been waiting for this day even longer than I have._  
  
Harry walked the final few steps smiling. He ended up beside the fountain, with his back to it, a deliberate choice for those who wanted to read symbolism into such things. Draco had been the one to point out that they needed to appease that crowd, too, not just the usual suspects.  
  
Harry met pair after pair of the eyes that watched him, and nodded coolly back to them. He was here, in the heart and center of the Ministry’s power, what he had once thought was destined to be  _his_ power, back when he had thought of being an Auror as a simple and uncomplicated destiny.  
  
 _A month ago I was planning how to save the world. Then I was married, and the Ministry granted me a holiday and grumbled about it. They said they would celebrate, but they didn’t. How long have I been making myself an embarrassment to them?_  
  
Harry didn’t know, but he  _did_ know that that could stop now. The Ministry could stop pretending to give a shit. Harry could stop pretending to feel awful and bad every time he did something that the Ministry or his superiors didn’t like. Really, the arrangement would benefit everyone involved. Harry didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of something like this long ago.  
  
 _Because you were still fighting to make them like you. You thought your life was worth nothing if they didn’t._  
  
Harry grinned, and the smile was hard, and tight, and brilliant. He had thought that, but he was different now, and woe betide the Ministry if they thought he was the same and challenged him. Of course, after the little speech he was going to give, no one should think he was the same, but he had never given the Ministry that much credit for intelligence.  
  
He waited until he was sure that most of the shifting people in the room had focused their attention on him, and not their notebooks or their stomachs or their desire to sit down or their need to go to the bathroom. Then he turned and faced the nearest hearth, his heart hammering in in his chest. He had tried to pull off a few of these grand symbolic gestures in the past, and they had always,  _always_ gone wrong.  
  
But he hadn’t had Draco Malfoy on his side at the time. This fireplace flared the way it was supposed to, the flames and smoke rose up and roared away, and there was Draco, stepping out of the Floo and shaking his cloak to rid it of the soot. By the time he stepped out into the Atrium and made his way to Harry’s side, it was spotless.   
  
Harry inclined his head to him, fiercely glad, his heart howling like a wolf inside him. Draco gave him the tiniest of smiles. They had agreed on that. Show too much emotion in public, and gossips would seize on it. No one should know that their relationship to each other had changed that much. Instead, they would give people something to gossip about later, and in the meantime, present even more of a united front than before.  
  
Draco’s hand  _did_ slip into Harry’s, and grip it, before he fell back towards the Fountain and let Harry face his challengers alone. Harry was the one who had thrown down the gauntlet, and so he was the one who would have to deal with the consequences.  
  
“I called you here today to make an announcement,” Harry said, his gaze traveling from face to face. His heart still beat wildly and his stomach still ached, but yes, all in all, this was easier than he had thought it would be. Perhaps he had always wanted to do this, the same way Ron had always wanted to see it, and he simply hadn’t acknowledged it to himself, because if he did, he would know he had rounded the point of no return. “I’m married to Draco Malfoy, yes, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve abandoned my allegiance to Auror work, or to saving the world, or to truth and right. But some Aurors have accused me of letting my marriage change me, as though people didn’t get married every day with much less fuss.”  
  
He had already located Eliot in the crowd, so he could turn and look at her. She flushed, but she was no coward, and she stepped forwards, her wand in her hand but lowered at her side.  _God knows we wouldn’t want anyone thinking_ she  _was the threat,_ Harry thought dryly.  
  
“You aren’t married to just anyone,” she said. “You’re married to a former Death Eater. And you’re not just anyone to get married, either. The Chosen One can’t do things and expect to be treated like a private citizen.”  
  
Harry spread his hands and widened his eyes. “But isn’t that just what you’ve decided I  _am_? What I have to be, because otherwise it isn’t fair? When I break the rules, I’m punished like an ordinary Auror, because otherwise it would be favoritism. But at the same time, I have to hold up a higher standard, because I’m not like them.” He smiled at Eliot, but his words were for everyone, and his eyes touched on certain points in the crowd, certain watching faces, to make sure they knew that. “You have to decide which one is true, because I’ll tell you something, I’m really fucking sick of the double standard.”  
  
That caused a stir, the way he had known it would. Reporters scribbled. A few people in Auror robes, although Harry had never seen them among the field Aurors, exchanged hard glances. And someone in the back of the crowd looked as if he was about to begin pushing his way to the front.  
  
Eliot didn’t deign to take any notice of that. “I can’t answer for that,” she said. “I wasn’t the one who made the Ministry rules. But you have to realize that this much fame and power carries consequences and prices.”  
  
“I was  _eighteen_ when I defeated Voldemort,” Harry said, and laughed when the name made her flinch, after all these years. Draco had probably flinched, too, but everyone’s eyes were on Harry and not him. Harry could take the intense, hostile stares better, as the protector of his family right now, and he gloried in that, to know he had someone to protect even when he was doing the most selfish thing he’d ever done. “I had no  _choice._ There was a prophecy, and I got dragged into it. And if you think that I should pay some kind of price for that, more than I’ve paid already, in grief and fear, then I’ll tell you what I think of people who let teenagers fight their wars.”  
  
Eliot just stared at him. Harry knew she had known that, so she probably just didn’t expect him to bring it up and didn’t have a counterattack for it.  
  
“You ought to know,” Harry continued, his voice growing stronger, “that I did that so the world wouldn’t die. And then I—and other people—sacrificed things again just a few weeks ago so the Dementor ghosts would stop attacking us. Even before we got any thanks, I learned about the price I had to pay.” He jerked his head at Draco, silent and watching, and thought he saw him flinch again. “In this case, it was my fault, and I was happy to atone. But now you’re telling me I have to pay the price for—what? For being the only person brave enough to do what was right instead of cowering in a corner? For saving the world twice, when most people never even have to save it once?”  
  
Eliot kept blinking, and then she looked over her shoulder, as though she expected someone to step forwards and rescue her. But no one else was going to volunteer, except perhaps the person Harry had already seen shoving to the front of the crowd. And he was nowhere in sight yet. Eliot had chosen this position on her own, and now she would have to bear the costs of it.  
  
To her credit, she seemed willing. She straightened her spine and her neck, and said, “Other people helped you. You weren’t the only one who took the brunt of You-Know-Who’s attacks, or the ghosts’ attacks.”  
  
“Then why don’t those people have to pay the same kind of price I do?” Harry asked, in a monotone. “Oh, I  _forgot_. Those people don’t have the same kind of face and name recognition. They aren’t as easy to blame and shame. They aren’t as easy to guilt into doing whatever you want them to do.” His voice was rising, and he paused and pulled it back under control. “No one else in the Ministry who didn’t already care about me has  _ever_ cared about the extra threats I face because of my name, and now you tell me that it’s reasonable and expected for me to pay that price, but I can’t claim anything for myself because it might make me suspect.  
  
“Well, some of that  _is_ my fault.” Harry could feel Draco stirring behind him, ready to move forwards, but he waved his hand behind his back to make Draco stand still. He wasn’t really heading in that direction, although he could see why Draco might think he was. “I put up with it for so long that you began to think, I’m sure, I actually agreed with you. And I thought I did for years, that the alternative was to become some sort of Dark Lord myself.   
  
“No more. I don’t think like that anymore. I think I deserve the same level of respect and protection that all the other Aurors, all the other employees of the Ministry, get. You’ll start believing me now, and you won’t question my loyalty to the Ministry again. Because the very next person that does that is going to be responsible for Harry Malfoy quitting.”  
  
*  
  
Draco could feel heat surging up his chest and throat like a brushfire, could feel himself having to swallow and swallow again against the temptation to break out laughing. Or maybe he would howl, or utter some mad combination of laughter and braying.  
  
 _I wanted to hear him say those words. Maybe not as much as Weasley did, maybe not as much as he needed to, but I wanted it._  
  
 _And I have the right to ask things of him now. He might not always grant them, but I can ask them._  
  
Draco took a step forwards to be more at Harry's side, smiling at the people whose eyes he caught. Yes, he had the right to ask those things of Harry, because Harry had  _granted_ him the right. No one else had it, except perhaps Harry's friends.  
  
For years, Harry had given the Ministry power over him. He understood that now, that the very power he was scared of wielding could have let him challenge them. Now he was making it a weapon against them instead of against himself.  
  
And it was  _wonderful._  
  
Draco met pair after pair of surprised or shocked eyes, and that was wonderful, too. He didn't need to move. He could stand there, and watch them reel back or step back cautiously or scribble or stand and stare, as was their nature.  
  
Someone had forced his way to the front of the crowd, though, and it seemed that he wouldn't be as tame as the Auror who had questioned them so far. He was a big, bulky man who looked vaguely familiar to Draco; perhaps he had seen him on one of his visits to the Ministry to answer the latest questions about the Manor and his family that the Ministry's lackeys had come up with. He had a long black beard, and snapping blue eyes, and he faced Harry without hesitation.  
  
"You didn't need to marry Malfoy to make up for what you supposedly did," he said. "You can divorce him at any time."  
  
Draco caught his breath, but not out of the fear someone suggesting another option to Harry once would have inspired. And he could see the delighted smile slowly widening on Harry's face, too. This had been the kind of thing he'd wanted to lead the conversation to, but he hadn't known if he would succeed.  
  
"I could divorce him, maybe," Harry agreed, "except that he provides me with things I want." His hand strayed sideways and gripped Draco's. Draco squeezed back, understanding perfectly well that this was only a pretense and that they didn't  _need_ to tell anyone else about their sex lives for this to count as a legitimate marriage. "And I don't want to give everyone who wants me divorced the satisfaction."  
  
"The satisfaction of counting you as a loyal Auror again?" The man folded his arms and gave Harry a scanning look, like a bear picking a weak spot.  
  
"The satisfaction of seeing me dead, or seeing Draco dead," Harry said, and put his head back and showed all his teeth.  
  
The man automatically put some distance between him and Harry, as if he suspected Harry would charge him right then. Draco wondered what  _exactly_ Harry's reputation in the Ministry had been, and how he could find out.  
  
"Who is he?" he whispered quickly to Harry, while the man was trying to figure out how to respond.  
  
"Brian Calumney," Harry breathed back, not taking his eyes from Calumney's face. "An Auror of twenty years' standing, and everyone's choice for the next Head Auror. He doesn't particularly like that I got into the Aurors on the strength of killing the Dark Lord."  
  
Calumney recovered before Draco could answer that. "You're arguing that someone who wants to see you divorced and your loyalty returned to the Ministry, and to your  _birth_ family, wants to kill you as well?" He shook his head. "You've always had a bad case of thinking the world revolves around you, Potter, but this is the worst I've seen."  
  
"First of all, my name is Malfoy, not Potter," Harry said. It made his friends look a little ill, but Draco had to admit that some of that could come from the caressing hand Draco laid on his shoulder, rather than the words. "Second, yes, it's rather hard not to think you're important when everyone tells you are from the time you're a child. And third, no. There have been numerous attempts on my life since I agreed to fulfill the debt I owed Draco, and some on Draco's."  
  
Silence, and people glancing at each other. Maybe because Calumney didn't seem to have an answer to that, the Auror who had been speaking before--Eliot, Draco remembered her name was--took over again. "Who would want to kill you for that?"  
  
"I don't know," Harry said, and let his eyes travel back and forth between the two of them, saying nothing more.  
  
"We might want to see you back where you belong," Calumney said gruffly. "That doesn't mean we would resort to murder."  
  
"Where I belong? When no one is ever satisfied with my behavior no matter what I do?" Harry shook his head. "No, thanks. I'd rather live with the enemies taking shots at me because I'm a Malfoy,  _visible_ enemies, than the invisible ones I had here. Enemies like Aurelius Shepherd at least want to kill me for a definable reason."  
  
It was a risk, mentioning the name like that, but Draco had agreed to it. Because they were in public, and that meant he could see reactions. His gaze was on the crowd and not Harry the minute Harry began speaking this time, because he knew what direction Harry was going in.  
  
There were a few people who caught their breath, a few people who paled. Draco thought he could dismiss them. They were either reacting to Harry's words, or they knew his cousin and might worry Draco or Harry would suspect them.  
  
But there was one person who jerked, his hand flying up before he snatched his arm back to his side.  
  
Blaise.  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes and looked down. Blaise might have seen his reaction already, but Draco would conceal it if he could. And he wanted to laugh at the vicious satisfaction that thrummed through him like a second heartbeat.  
  
Blaise had been his friend in the past, but for a special definition of "friend" that meant "people who had known each other long enough to know certain things." They had never been close, never fought on the same side of the war, never discussed family beliefs. It had just been assumed that they were the same. Draco had learned, too late, what not discussing beliefs with someone else could lead to. He had never suspected, for instance, that Vincent Crabbe was a much more devoted Death Eater than he was.  
  
But if Blaise wanted something badly enough, he would go after it. It made sense that he would try to remove Harry in one way if the first one he wanted didn't work. Perhaps not the attack on Draco in the Ministry had been his, but definitely the hiring of Madeline Robbs, whose fee Draco was sure his cousin couldn't have afforded.  
  
And now, there would be some  _revenge._  
  
Blaise had caught himself now, and simply stood there looking indifferent. Draco looked away from him and scanned the rest of the crowd. There might be someone else involved with the murder attempts here, perhaps the one that had happened to him in the bathroom at the party. He wouldn't pass up the chance to catch their other enemies simply because they seemed to have caught on to one large section of them.  
  
But no one else had reacted so recognizably. They just waited with parted lips for the next juicy piece of gossip.  
  
"Outside attempts to murder you have little to do with the Ministry," Calumney was objecting now.  
  
"But both of you make my life more difficult," Harry retorted. "And why should I come back to a place that hates me and tells me that I have no right to make claims on them even as it also tells me that I'm special and  _should_ makes claims? I'll never be treated normally here. I'll always be the hero or the scapegoat, never anywhere in-between. Either you promise that it'll change, or I walk."  
  
Eliot looked troubled, playing with her wand, but Calumney puffed himself up like a blowfish victim. "And you think to threaten us with  _that_? In the end, you're only one small part of us, only one  _part_ of what makes this Ministry work, not the whole thing."  
  
Harry winced a little, and Draco knew why. This hadn't been the outcome he hoped for. Draco played with his fingers to let him know that  _someone_ still supported him.  
  
But Harry drew himself up with a little breath and nod, and Draco knew that, best of all, he wouldn't give in to the Ministry's ridiculous demands the way he had done in the past. Draco leaned back with a smile, and watched, and waited.  
  
*  
  
That stung. No matter what happened, there was some level of blame. No matter what happened, someone wanted him to stay and devote his efforts to the Ministry, and at the same time wanted to say that he should do something extra, and then wanted to remind him in the same breath that he shouldn't expect anything special for his efforts, because that would be selfish.  
  
Harry was aware, even as he stood there, of the guilt creeping in.  _Wasn't_ it selfish to quit because he was treated poorly by some people? Not everyone did it. And  _wasn't_ it selfish to want more than the fame and renown he had gained for defeating Voldemort? He'd had a lot.  
  
But no, he had put up with this behavior for years, and it hadn't changed. If he couldn't make it change, he didn't owe it to anyone to stay and endure it. That satisfied no one except his guilt complex, really, since too many people in the Ministry thought that his endurance was a sign of him plotting something evil later.  
  
"I'm going," he said. "On that note. I don't want to be an Auror anymore, and I resign." He took the resignation letter out of his pocket and cast the enchantment on it that he had learned for multiple memos in the Ministry, which would cause it to seek out the Head Auror. It rose, flapping, and skimmed off.  
  
He next took out the shrunken package from his pocket that held his Auror robes, enlarged it, and dumped them all on the floor. He stirred them with his foot, looking mildly at Eliot and Calumney, who continued to stare at him. "Take them back," he said. "I think you'll find that's all the official robes that were ever issued to me. I'm not an Auror now."  
  
He turned around in time to catch the triumphant grin on Ron's face, and tip a little salute back. Yes, he had done it. He had come this far, and this time, it was going to  _stick_. He would have to make a new life for himself.  
  
But with Draco at his side, that would be far easier than it would have been otherwise.  
  
Draco took his hand as he walked away from the Aurors, towards the fireplaces. He had no need to go out the front doors this time, or walk to an Apparition point like a private citizen. He was going home, and that was the end of it.  
  
"Potter!"  
  
Harry twitched, but didn't turn around. That wasn't his name anymore, and they had lost the ability to command or call him by it.  
  
Then arms were around him, and Ron and Hermione were hugging and congratulating him. Harry hugged them back, although part of him worried that Ron would take even more backlash, and maybe Hermione too, from demonstrating their loyalty to him in front of the Ministry.  
  
 _At least no one can harass Ron into making me come back, though. And he chose to do this._  
  
Draco waited patiently until Ron and Hermione chattered their way through felicitations, and then took Harry through the Floo. They came out in the sitting room where Harry had once received Zabini, and Ossy stood ready with drinks for the both of them.  
  
First, though, Draco pinned him against the stone of the fireplace, and gave him a long and extremely thorough congratulations of his own.


	30. To Handle an Enemy

"Blaise Zabini is being here."  
  
Harry blinked across the table at Draco. Draco blinked back at him. They'd had a late breakfast that morning, talking about Healer Bowman's last visit to Narcissa and plans that might flush out the person who had stabbed Draco at the Ministry. Harry had thought they'd have a nice, leisurely day of planning vengeance on their enemies.  
  
Instead, it seemed their enemy had come seeking them.  
  
"What is he acting like, Ossy?" Draco asked, turning away from Harry to lock eyes with the little elf. Ossy stood in the dining room doorway, Harry noticed, and seemed to be doing his best to look impassive. But it was difficult when his eyes flashed fire.   
  
"He is seeming angry," Ossy said at once, his ears flopping as his head tilted from side to side like a Muggle toy Harry had once seen Hermione holding. "He is be trying to seem penitent, but he is not succeeding."  
  
Draco nodded. "Then this is a visit to try and defuse our suspicions," he told Harry. "I wonder which one of us should handle him?" He was drumming his fingers on the table in front of him, his eyes nearly as bright with a certain kind of fever as Ossy's.  
  
"I think I should," Harry said, putting aside his food. Ossy disappeared from the dining room doorway and landed next to him, staring. Harry leaned back in his chair and fairly successfully ignored Ossy, stretching his legs out. "He knows that we're on to him. There's no reason for deception and dancing around the issue. And directness is my strength."  
  
"You think I'm  _lacking_ in directness over the last few days?" Draco's voice was pure power, as was his glare.  
  
Harry shivered a little as he remembered the hands that had pinned him to the pillow and moved over his body with a master's courage. "No," he said, and it came out hoarse. Draco smiled. Harry cleared his throat and tried again. "But Zabini might be more confident if he thinks he can persuade you around, or draw on your old friendship. We might as well show him there's no reason to be confident."  
  
"If we can draw more secrets out of him--"  
  
"He's going to be on his guard no matter what. We might as well let me handle him."  
  
Draco watched him thoughtfully, then nodded. "And, of course, this fits your apparently burning need to handle all the danger yourself."  
  
Harry felt himself turn pink. "That's not--that's not the only reason. I know you can handle yourself, Draco. But so far, you've been wounded more severely in these attacks than I have, and we still don't know how far you can trust your basilisk wand. It makes more sense that we should send the brute force in to meet the attack."  
  
"I don't appreciate you referring to yourself as brute force, when you know full well that you and I are equally intelligent," Draco said casually. "As long as we understand and agree on that, then I'm satisfied to let you handle Blaise. With me observing from nearby, of course. Perhaps under your Invisibility Cloak?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth to continue the argument, and then shut it again. Why? What Draco said was reasonable, and Harry wanted Draco to respect the reasonableness of his arguments, so he should do the same thing.  
  
"All right," he said. "The Invisibility Cloak. It's one of the Deathly Hallows, and it's one of the best protections you could have."  
  
Draco nodded, and leaned back in his chair with a faint grin. "We can keep Blaise waiting as long as we want, so will you  _please_ eat something before Ossy's head explodes?"  
  
*  
  
Draco stood under the Invisibility Cloak near the shelves in the library, and watched as Blaise came out of the fire, glancing around. Only Ossy was there to receive him at the moment, with a silver tray loaded with glasses of water and ice.  
  
Draco, seeing through a thin, faint film that looked to be made of starlight, saw Blaise's face change when he glimpsed the water.  _Well. He knows that he isn't welcome. Did he come actually expecting to be made welcome?_  
  
The door banged open--making Draco conceal an instinctive wince for the wood of the shelves it hit--and Harry strode in. He had adopted the robes that he'd worn to the Ministry party, or a variation of them, on Draco's and Ossy's suggestions. They were deep blue, and silver near the collar, Malfoy colors once upon a time, though not generally worn for years. Blaise would recognize them, though, and the particularly florid and serpentine version of the Malfoy crest above Harry's heart.  
  
Harry just stood there, and looked at him, and said nothing.   
  
Blaise said nothing for some time, either. Then he moved over and picked up one cup of water from the tray, filling it with ice. Harry's head turned to follow him. Draco was reminded of the way Harry had watched the serpent in second year that Draco himself had conjured, at least until Harry knew for certain he could control it.  
  
Blaise sipped the water and met Harry's eyes. "Not as good as wine," he said casually. "But I've always found the water taken from Malfoy wells particularly good anyway. Did you know that  _all_ the water drunk in the house comes from wells on the property?"  
  
"No," Harry said. "And I wish that you would stop trying to put off the inevitable, Zabini. You're a Slytherin. You must know that we saw your reaction in the Atrium yesterday."  
  
Blaise's face had always become most handsome when he was in trouble, Draco thought, and anticipating punishment by a professor. It did the same thing now, although Blaise did nothing but put the water glass down on a table beside him. "And you think that you have the right to say that to me?" he asked. "What does Draco say?"  
  
"Draco is the one who saw you, prat."  
  
If Blaise hadn't expected the accusation, he  _definitely_ hadn't expected schoolboy insults. Draco saw him blink and stare at Harry some more, but then he shook his head and murmured, "I would appreciate the chance to talk to him and set this misunderstanding right."  
  
"It isn't a misunderstanding, and you're an idiot," Harry snapped. Draco winced. He wouldn't have gone that far. "We know that you're behind at least one attempt to get me killed. The way you reacted when you heard Aurelius Shepherd's name was too great a coincidence."  
  
"I know that he's a cousin of Draco's, and that he's talked continually about how he wants the Malfoy properties," Blaise said. "That's a far distance from putting myself  _in league_ with him."  
  
"Then I suppose the name Madeline Robbs means nothing to you either?"  
  
Blaise turned grey. Harry might possibly have missed it, but Draco knew, and he felt a fluttering little stab in his chest. Not a real friend or not, he had known Blaise for a long time. This was like losing an old scar.  
  
"You don't understand the many, many business contexts in which I move," Blaise said, cocking his head to the side and striving for an expression of nonchalance. From Harry's snort, he was unimpressed. "I could easily have met someone named that. I meet so many people, even Draco's cousin once. I am uninterested in having anything further to do with them, most of the time."  
  
"You met someone you hired to kill me," Harry said. He had his arms folded, but considering it was a position that would allow him to easily go for his wand, Draco decided that was all right. "Did you really think that Draco would marry you after that, when he'd refused you once before?"  
  
Draco saw the moment Blaise decided that he might as well respond, that pretending ignorance would serve no one. He put his hands on the table, in a position that would allow him to push well out of the way before Harry attacked, but kept his head turned towards Harry. His smile wasn't pleasant.  
  
"He would have married me already, if he had thought to ask me," Blaise said quietly. "He thought I was too proud of my name to give it up, but I have little family pride. And I would have asked nothing of him except what he's already shown himself willing to give you." His eyes ran up and down Harry's robes, stopping on the Malfoy crest.  
  
"I give him other things," Harry said. "You would only have taken."  
  
Blaise didn't shrug, but Draco saw a little ripple up the middle of his body that might have been intended as that gesture. "Draco understands how this bargain works. He was weak. He needed help. Why he chose  _you_ , I still don't understand. It'll serve the immediate need, but it'll weaken him in the long run."  
  
Had it been a few days ago, Draco might have seen Harry stiffen with doubt. But they were more than that to each other now, and Harry only sighed. "Your efforts to put dissension between us are pitiful, Zabini. We have a working marriage. We have money and goals that we can share. Destroying you is one of those, now."  
  
"Draco would never agree to destroy one of his oldest friends."  
  
"What makes you think he calls you that, now?"  
  
Blaise paused. Draco could only use that word for it, although the full-body stillness that accompanied it made him want to choose something else. But Blaise looked as if he had been leaping at a target and had someone push it out of the way at the last moment.  
  
"This is the way things are done," Blaise said calmly a moment later. "Draco understands that. I didn't strike at  _him_. I tried to be rid of a rival. That's more than acceptable, under the old codes that guide the way pure-bloods do things. I wouldn't expect  _you_  to grasp it, of course, but that's the way it is. I didn't weaken Draco. I would have made him stronger in the end by ridding him of a liability. I was protecting his strength."  
  
Draco tensed a little. They hadn't discussed what would happen if Blaise took that tactic, and it was the kind of argument that might be superficially convincing to someone who felt himself out of place in pure-blood society. If Harry--  
  
But Harry laughed, full and free, and proved that he had absorbed some of the lessons that Draco wanted him to learn, after all. "You strengthened him by trying to weaken his family? Because ultimately it's his family that you struck at." He touched the Malfoy crest again, and Draco didn't think it was his imagination that Harry's fingers fluttered in a caressing little stroke above it. "Draco told me over and over that bearing the Malfoy name is more than merely being called that. I didn't believe him before, but now I do."  
  
Blaise fell back a step. Draco rose to his feet under the Cloak, his blood humming. It was one thing for Blaise to do that in the middle of the Ministry, surrounded by people who might keep his enemies from noticing him, but in the middle of an open room and with the eyes of an enemy on him, it was practically suicide.  
  
Which meant Blaise couldn't control his reaction. Which meant he had never thought that Harry would speak those words, or at least not with the note of belief that rang in his voice.  
  
It was  _wonderful_ , to know they might have conquered Blaise at last, and in the way that he had tried with Harry, introducing a crack into the flawless bell of his heart.  
  
"You don't understand what you're saying," Blaise chose at last, his voice low and gentle. "You don't understand how blood endures, while someone adopted into the family and given the name isn't counted the same. Ask Narcissa Malfoy if you don't believe me. Ask her if she had all the privileges that someone born to the name did."  
  
"That's interesting that you suggest I talk to her, after what I did to her."  
  
Draco started and nearly intervened, but then shut his mouth again. No, Harry knew Narcissa had awakened from the coma at least once even if he hadn't had the chance or the courage to talk to her himself yet, and as far as Draco could make out, he wasn't consumed with guilt at that anymore. He had another, different reason for saying this, and Draco was curious enough to want to know what it was.  
  
Blaise remained still, in a pose that was probably meant to be impressive but which Draco knew meant he didn't know what to say next.  _Friends know these things about each other,_ he thought to himself, and clenched his fists in the folds of the Cloak again.  
  
"I know what I am now," Harry said, and his voice turned into a low hiss Draco thought could have intimidated the Dementor ghosts, if he had chosen to speak to them that way. "I know  _who_ I am. I know that Malfoys have certain rights and privileges even when adopted into the family, and your pathetic attempt to convince me otherwise won't work. Why did you come here, Blaise? Did you think Draco would welcome you with open arms when he already rejected you once before?"  
  
Blaise's face went more than slightly grey. Draco wanted to chuckle aloud, but kept it to himself. It was much better to allow Harry this initial triumph; Draco's would be the protracted revenge, of course.  
  
"I know more about what Draco needs than you do," Blaise said, and his voice sounded raw, as though he had abandoned the polished marks for the same directness Harry was using with him. Draco would have rolled his eyes, but it was true that Blaise had no reason to suspect this wouldn't work with Harry. "If you  _care_ about him, you'll leave him now and let him marry someone who can benefit him more in the future."  
  
"And what do you suggest I do about the demi-marriage and the scandal dissolving it would cause?" Harry stood with his arms casually folded, smiling at Blaise. "That's another reason not to leave Draco to anyone as selfish as you are."  
  
Blaise did some more staring. Draco half-smiled. Part of his revenge, perhaps the best part, was seeing Blaise have to face someone who knew what  _he_ was and would leave no opening available to him to better his position.  
  
 _But I will come up with something else. And as much as I'm enjoying watching Harry push this conversation, I do want to do something to him myself._  
  
"There are options to handle all of this, Potter, and you know it," Blaise said, apparently deciding refuge now lay in a combination of deliberate insult about Harry's last name and mysterious, lofty knowledge. "The pure-blood laws have as many exceptions as there are rules. We can do this. We can come up with some way to end the demi-marriage.  _If_ you want to be free, that is, and not simply preying on Draco for the rest of your life."  
  
Harry laughed. The sound was one that Draco had never heard before, deep and genuinely amused and yet mocking. Perhaps the sound Harry would have made at school if he was Sorted into Slytherin.  
  
 _I wish he had been._  
  
"I was the one who contributed the new Galleons to the Malfoy fortune, the one you're so eager to take over." Harry shook his head. "I was the one who brought at least half his strength to his family, and now you insist that I'm the one preying on him? Zabini, half these arguments might have worked before I really understood that the demi-marriage adopted me into the family, but half of them wouldn't have. You might have tried which half was which out on yourself before you tried this pathetic scene." He turned his back and began to walk towards the door of the library.  
  
Blaise lifted his wand.  
  
Draco flung back the Cloak and intervened with a shield that zipped forth from the basilisk wand before he finished thinking about his desire. The shield spread out between Blaise and Harry, glittering like the starlit folds of the Cloak, but far stronger, and able to send curses back at the caster. Draco knew that the same way he knew the basilisk wand was singing in his hand.  
  
Blaise turned to him, and his fingers sagged on the wand. He had his hand up again a moment later, of course, because he wasn't stupid enough to give Draco the chance to attack him without answering back. But his eyes were duller than they would have been if Draco hadn't overheard his conversation, Draco knew, and his gaze was divided now, between his two Malfoy enemies.  
  
"I wish I could forgive you for some of the things you've said," Draco told him. "And it would be easy if you had simply wished harm on Harry for taking something you wanted. But you've wished harm on my family." He shook his head sadly. "By all the laws of the pure-bloods, Blaise, that's something you  _don't_ do."  
  
 _Not unless you're in a position where you can back up the threats and convince others you have the right to make them._ But Blaise never had been. His mother was a powerful witch and a skilled murderer, but she had made her life for herself as an individual, not as the head of a family. Draco was surprised she had had a child at all.  
  
"The appearances are against me," Blaise said, with a little flourish of his wand and a little bow of his head. "But I think you'll see that there are advantages to putting up with me."  
  
"Name three." Draco kept the basilisk wand leveled. "You know that I wouldn't overlook what you've done for anything less than that."  
  
Blaise twirled his wand between his fingers, and said nothing. Draco didn't take his eyes from him, because that would be stupid, but he  _did_ glance at Harry, and Harry was frowning fiercely.  
  
" _Stalling_ ," Harry said suddenly, and vanished in an Apparition straight past the wards that opened and slammed shut behind him.  
  
Draco wanted to join him and the outside attack that Blaise had apparently been giving time to let happen, but he wasn't stupid enough to leave an armed enemy in his home and trust him to depart peacefully. "Ossy!" he called, and nodded to Blaise even before he heard the _crack_ that signified the elf's appearance. "Make sure that Mr. Zabini is comfortable, immobile, and senseless."  
  
Blaise opened his mouth, but Ossy had already sprung into action, and in moments Blaise was snoring, bound on a conjured bed. Draco was glad to find that the sight aroused not a spasm of regret or relief in him, only impatience. If Blaise hadn't been here, then he and Harry could have met the attack together.  
  
Draco Apparated in turn, the wards opening and closing behind him. He could undoubtedly have done the same thing the day Robbs attacked Harry by the gate, but he had fallen into the old habit of thinking that the wards would prevent Apparition anywhere in the house, and hadn't brought his mind up to date.  
  
Then he put the thought out of his head. What mattered was that he and Harry were going forth to battle side-by-side.  
  
*  
  
Harry landed near the front gates of the Manor, not because he knew the attack was there but because he thought it might be there as well as anywhere else. Besides, it was the most familiar part of the grounds to him, and from here, he could see most of the gardens and the house. He crouched there, scanning the Manor in silence.  
  
His heart pounded in his chest, his ears sang, and his blood and adrenaline coiled up like a giant snake, ready to drive him forwards at anything that appeared. He wouldn't miss being an Auror if his life was like this all the time.  
  
 _Of course, it being like this all the time would be rather hard on the Manor._  
  
Then Draco was at his side, and they were pressed together hip to hip, leg to leg, and when Draco turned and watched in the opposite direction, back to back. Harry's lips curled back in intense pleasure despite himself.  
  
"Do you hear anything?" Draco whispered.  
  
Harry shook his head. "The wards haven't told you anything?" Despite the connection to them that Draco would probably say any member of the Malfoy family shared, Harry couldn't help thinking there should be  _some_ advantage to Draco's position as head of the family rather than the tendency to be blamed for everything by outsiders.  
  
"No." Draco shut his eyes and sniffed, deeply. Harry wasn't sure what to make of that, but kept still. Then Draco snapped his eyes open and said, "I can smell fire. The same sort of scent I smelled before the dragon showed up last time."  
  
Harry immediately glanced at the corner of sky that the dragon had come from, and then told himself not to be stupid. Their enemies wouldn't send the dragon from the same direction. Perhaps there would be two dragons this time.  
  
 _I ought to contact Charlie and ask if he knows any Dragon-Keepers who would let them off their reservations,_ Harry thought, turning a full circle.  _Someone has to notice when dragons disappear, and since they can't be tamed, it makes the most sense to hire Dragon-Keepers to handle them._  
  
The sky seemed to split open, in the reverse of the spell that Harry had used to destroy the dragon last time. Harry braced for two dragons to drop down on their heads, and reminded himself that at least the wards were up now and they could retreat behind them if they needed to--small comfort though that seemed with dragonfire possibly sweeping in to devour them.  
  
But what came out of the sky wasn't a dragon. It was pure and radiant fire, blooming straight down at them, moving so fast that Harry could feel the hairs rising and singeing on his arms before he saw the flame as flame.  
  
Draco spat a single word, and the world disappeared.  
  
*  
  
 _I don't think this is my cousin, or at least not just my cousin acting alone. Someone wants to destroy Harry, and me, and the whole Manor._  
  
The thought snapped through his mind at the same time as another thought seemed to run through his body, down his arm, to the basilisk wand, and he hurled them into the cold and the darkness.  
  
It took Draco a moment to understand what had happened, how he had reacted, the same way it might have taken him a second to understand pulling his hand back from a hot bowl. The basilisk wand had conjured a sphere of blackness that surrounded them, and from the feel of it, chased away the fire. Or maybe froze it, or simply made it cease to exist. It was extremely hard to tell, with that wand.  
  
 _Most impressive,_ Draco thought, wondering if it counted if he talked to the wand in his head. At the moment, though, he didn't want to open his mouth for fear his tongue would freeze off.  _But can you let us see what's going on?_  
  
The sphere turned transparent but thick and fuzzy, as if they stood inside a black tent, looking out. Draco could see singed grass all around the fence of the Manor, but the wards remained intact around the outside of the grounds, guarding.  
  
And arrayed in front of them were five wizards, hoods tossed back, the leader staring at the sphere as if he didn't know what to do with it. That one had blond hair and features that were a poor copy of Draco's.  
  
Draco found Harry's hand, and trusting that he could speak normally now, murmured, "My cousin is here."  
  
"Then let's drop this, and go confront him," Harry responded instantly.  
  
Draco nodded, and with a thought to the basilisk wand, the thing was done, and they stood before Aurelius Shepherd.


	31. Comes the Answer

For long moments, the man Harry presumed was Aurelius Shepherd didn't move. His eyes had widened, and his hands tightened on his sleeves as if he wanted to rip the cuffs off. Then he dropped his arms and smiled at them. Harry had seen smiles that looked more fake during his time as an Auror, but not many.  
  
"You don't understand, then," Shepherd said, with a small nod. "You are cleverer than I expected, but you still don't understand."  
  
"What do you mean?" Draco was leaning forwards, poised on the balls of his feet as though he was going to sprint across the distance between him and Shepherd. Harry put a hand on his arm to stop him. Shepherd's smile still remained, and his eyes had flickered to the side. This was another distraction, Harry thought, or another attempt to stall them until more allies could arrive. Shepherd didn't mean anything with his cryptic words.  
  
"You don't understand why I would want to take Malfoy Manor away from you." Shepherd's gaze was commanding, Harry had to give him that. "Why I would be a better custodian than you would."  
  
"No, I don't," Draco said. Harry was grateful to see that he kept his hand tight on the basilisk wand, at least. "Nor do I understand why you couldn't challenge me in the courts if you thought you had a claim that would stand up to legal scrutiny."  
  
Shepherd shook his head in what looked like disgust, but probably wasn't. His acting remained a thin layer on top of something that was meant to be deeper but didn't run deep enough for him to convince Harry. "Draco, Draco. There is a difference between a legal claim and a claim made by blood and ink." He snapped one hand over his shoulder, and the thin, brown-haired wizard behind him handed him a tightly-wound scroll.  
  
"It never occurred to you that other people who were Malfoy by blood could look at the Malfoy box in the Ministry Archives, did it?"  
  
Draco started badly. Harry kept his eyes on the wizards behind Shepherd. They had started to spread out, and he doubted it was to make it easier for them to congratulate Draco and Harry on their victory.  
  
"I am still Malfoy by blood." Shepherd shook his head a little. "Not name, but it doesn't matter in this case. I was able to find a copy of your grandfather Abraxas's will. Normally, that wouldn't matter now, since your father supplanted him as head of the family and could have made his own will, but your father is in prison. Highly irregular, wouldn't you say?"  
  
The other four wizards behind him had formed a pattern. Harry squinted. He was on the edge of recognizing it, or at least thinking where he had seen other patterns like that before, but then Draco spoke and shattered the spell of memory that was coming back on him.  
  
"There is a break in the continuity of the family." Draco spoke in the same calm, studied voice that he had used when they were confronted in the Ministry. "I have never denied that. But since I am my father's natural heir, the Ministry saw no reason to take the Manor away from me."  
  
Shepherd laughed softly. "But your grandfather Abraxas planned for this. He apparently didn't like his son getting involved with the Dark Lord. Shall I read you what he said would happen if Lucius died or otherwise lost control of the family without having made a will?"  
  
Draco's eyes were all for the scroll. Harry's eyes were all for the wizards behind Shepherd, and this time--  
  
This time, he realized that they were forming the points of a triangle, with one of them in the center of it and Shepherd resting somewhere around the triangle's base.  
  
Harry reacted without thought, because he  _had_ to, and for all he knew they might have prepared the rest of the ritual before coming here, which meant they could give Shepherd their power at any time. He leveled his wand at the wizard in the center of the triangle and barked, " _Confringo!_ "  
  
That wizard went flying backwards, two of his bones breaking. Better, he slammed into one of his friends on the way, and they fell, rolling over and over, and destroying the pattern they had so carefully tried to build up with Shepherd as the focus.  
  
Harry turned neatly to the side and so blocked the hexes that immediately came flying at Draco. He then dropped to the ground to avoid the curse aimed at him, and saw that Shepherd had his wand out, pressed against the scroll he had been unfurling in front of Draco.  
  
"Call your  _husband_ back and leash him," Shepherd snarled, "or I'll burn this, and you'll never know what kind of danger you're in!"  
  
Harry flicked his wand once. Shepherd cried out as the scroll burst into flames, and leaped back, swatting at the sparks, embers, and ashes that covered him.  
  
"The Ministry would never have let him leave with the only copy," Harry told Draco, who was staring at him, and then leaped up and charged straight into the middle of the group before they could reform.  
  
His best choice now was to keep moving fast and keep striking, never where they thought to expect him, never still where they would expect to see him. Harry broke one wizard's foot, dislocated another's shoulder, and encouraged the fire on Shepherd, keeping him busy, in one complete dash around the circle. He completed it with another roll, feeling a spell ruffle his hair. It would have set him on fire, too, but rolling on the ground was good for things like that.  
  
He sprang up on the very edge of the wards that throbbed around the Malfoy property, and felt the answering song to the wards from inside his blood. Draco had said that the demi-marriage didn't change Harry's actual blood, but it seemed his body had chosen to disagree.  
  
Shepherd had finally managed to get the fire out, and was in the middle of a ring of his allies. Although they were pale, one limping and the man Harry had initially blasted bending over with a hand pressed to his ribs, they curled around Shepherd, and Harry heard chanting from the mouths of at least two of them.  
  
Harry didn't even want to think of the kinds of rituals they could do here, on the edge of the property, with the head of the Malfoy family and his heir both in front of them. He charged without hesitation again, and their chanting broke apart in a wave of defensive spells that he easily batted aside.  
  
*  
  
 _Fuck, Harry!_  
  
Trust his demi-husband to get  _right_ in the middle of the battle and make it impossible for Draco to cover his back for fear of hitting him, Draco thought furiously, dodging from side to side and still not managing to keep up with Harry's speed. He didn't trust the basilisk wand enough yet to simply cast, and Harry should have  _known_ that, and remembered how important he was to the Malfoy line, and kept  _back_.  
  
 _And how important he is to me._  
  
Finally, Harry broke clear of the hexes that were trying to incapacitate him, and Draco pointed the basilisk wand at the wizard whose magic he thought was strongest, the blond one to the right of Aurelius. The wand throbbed with his desire, and that wizard crumpled over, one hand planted in the middle of his chest and his mouth slightly open. Draco could only hope it was the heart attack he had envisioned and not something else. Hopefully, it would keep the man out of the rest of the combat.  
  
Aurelius spun to face him. "Your  _grandfather_ was the one who specified that the nearest blood relative,  _not_ in the direct line, was to be his heir if one of his blood heirs demi-married a half-blood or Mudblood!" he spat.  
  
For a moment, Draco nearly wavered, nearly believed him. But Harry was right that the Ministry's Keeper of the Archives would never have let Aurelius walk out of her sight with the only copy of the will, which meant there was another copy in the Malfoy box, which meant Draco could check for himself.  
  
"I'll believe it when I read it," he snapped back, and clenched his hand into a fist, throwing his arm forwards.  
  
The air around Aurelius congealed, the wards reaching out and tugging him into them. Caught like a fly in amber, Aurelius struggled and yelled, but no one could hear his words now, and his allies started backing away.  
  
Draco hadn't known the new wards could do that, but he wasn't about to let on. He folded his arms and smirked at his cousin. "Are you still convinced that  _you_  could take this house from me?" he asked softly.  
  
There was a sharp  _pop_  as two of Aurelius's allies tried to Apparate away. Draco turned towards them, cursing himself for believing that they would simply stay and not putting up anti-Apparition spells--  
  
And then the two wizards appeared again, shaking their heads in a dazed way that made them look as if they had collided with a glass wall. Harry lowered his wand and gave Draco a vicious smile over his heads.  
  
 _I didn't put up anti-Apparition spells, but that doesn't mean someone else didn't,_ Draco thought, comforted, and faced Aurelius again. "I'm interested in your motives," he said. "Did you  _really_ send all those people to try and kill me and Harry?"  
  
There was a brief exchange of sharp curses, and then Harry finally Stunned the last of Aurelius's allies and bound them. Draco watched a certain level of hope fade out of his cousin's face. Apparently Aurelius had thought he had a chance of breaking free as long as some of the people he had brought with him were conscious.  
  
"I don't need to tell you anything." Aurelius thrust his chin into the air and tried to do the same with his hands, obviously forgetting that the wards restrained them like webbing. "I have a right to a fair trial."  
  
"When you attack me out of thin air, and conspire with people who have admitted they'd like to marry me in Harry's place, and try to conduct a ritual on my property, and hire an assassin?" Draco stared at him. " _Do_ you think so?"  
  
"The Ministry will avenge me if you kill me!"  
  
Sadly, Draco had to agree with him. Gone were the days when prominent pure-blood families could simply murder their enemies and no one would question it, accepting that it was natural for someone to want their enemies gone, and that the level of wealth and power in the wizarding community was even improved by it.  
  
"We have the time we need to find out your secrets without that," Draco said kindly, and Stunned Aurelius. When he gestured again, the wards drew Aurelius inside and floated him towards the house. They would place him in the same secure part of the cellars where they still held Madeline Robbs, Draco knew without knowing how he knew.  
  
"I didn't realize the wards could do that."  
  
Draco turned around to find Harry tightening and checking the bonds on Aurelius's allies, and then Lightening their bodies, something he had probably learned in Auror training. Draco smiled. "You could do it with them, too, I'm fairly sure. Something I didn't realize was built into the wards, but you quite literally contributed your strength to them. I'm sure they're stronger than before, and not just in the way that they're built and what they can resist."  
  
"I can carry them," Harry said, scooping up the bodies with a wordless  _Mobilicorpus_ and floating them behind him.  
  
"You like it," Draco said, watching him as Harry made for the gates of the Manor, although he also could have Apparated--probably--back inside the house with his captives.  
  
Harry paused and blinked at him. "I like what?"  
  
"The manual labor. The danger." Draco cocked his head as he watched Harry. "Do you enjoy that kind of thing because it's what you feel you're best at? Or did something else, some _one_ else, once tell you that it was all you're good for?"  
  
Harry rolled his eyes instead of flushing or blanching the way Draco had half-hoped he would, because that would mean he was on the right track to understand some of the ways Draco reacted. "You can't analyze everything I do that way, Draco," he said, and began to haul the bodies towards the house again. Draco had to admit that it was a good idea not to try and Apparate with them into the house until they understood more about how the new wards worked.  
  
Draco followed thoughtfully. He was sure that part of what he had said was right and he had understood something about important about Harry, but he wasn't sure what that was, yet.  
  
*  
  
Harry stepped into the cellar room that contained Shepherd and spent a moment idly tossing his wand up and down in his hand. He knew his place in this interrogation, which was to conduct it. Quite apart from Draco's reluctance to come near interrogations in the first place, he had shown during the fight that his cousin could affect him. And Shepherd didn't seem to be afraid of Draco.  
  
But he cowered from Harry, even though his chains were long and he could move away from him in this small, wood-paneled room. Harry simply had to fight down his own memories of being imprisoned in a similar place in Malfoy Manor and remind himself that he was part of the family now, and this was part of his place. He had worn the robes that had the Malfoy crest on them for his own reassurance as much as to intimidate Shepherd.  
  
"So," Harry said, sitting down in front of Shepherd and considering him. "I think we could charge you with at least six separate counts of Dark magic, if we wanted to take you to the Ministry."  
  
Shepherd stared at him. "Just because you're an Auror doesn't mean that you're a lawyer," he said. His voice trembled, though, and his eyes hadn't stopped darting to Harry and then away since Harry entered the room.  
  
"The spells necessary to control that dragon," Harry said, ticking them off on his fingers. "That ritual you intended to enact here. Hiring an assassin who used Dark magic. Hiring former Death Eaters who used Dark magic. The second ritual that you would have conducted, the one with the ring and not the triangle, if we had given you time." He paused and thought about it, started to shake his head, and then said, "Oh, right! The fire spell that you used to attack us before you appeared  _this_ time." He folded his hands in his lap and smiled at Shepherd. "It's six after all."  
  
"You can't prove that I had anything to do with any of that," Shepherd whispered.  
  
"We have your name from one of them," Harry said. "From two sources, actually. And the rituals and the fire spell we saw with our own eyes." He smiled at Shepherd again. "Our alternative is the merciful one compared to the term in Azkaban that involvement with those crimes could give you, I'm sure you'll agree."  
  
Shepherd had to lick his lips twice before he spoke. "What are your terms?"  
  
"That you tell us everything that had to do with this plot and the murder attempts, under Veritaserum," Harry said. "That you swear an Unbreakable Vow not to try to harm Draco or me again, or to try to get hold of the Malfoy name and properties in any other manner. And that you make restitution to us."  
  
Shepherd shut his eyes and shook his head. "I don't have any money, and I have people who are--disappointed that I can't pay them. You can't make me pay  _you_."  
  
"Draco has something else in mind," Harry said. And Draco  _had_ mentioned something, but he hadn't said what it was, and in the end Harry had leashed his curiosity and let his husband keep quiet for now. "You might know what better than I would. As a Malfoy by blood, I mean."  
  
Shepherd's eyes were darker when they looked at him. "Why couldn't you not  _exist_?" he whispered. "Why couldn't you refuse to marry Draco, the way everyone expected you to? Without you, none of this would have  _happened_."  
  
"I still don't think Draco would have chosen a penniless and powerless magical relative to marry, no matter what you think."  
  
" _Powerless_?" Shepherd lurched forwards to the length of his chains. "Face me with my wand in hand, and say that!"  
  
"I recognized those rituals," Harry told him. "One of them, the first one, could have been intended to give you possession of the Malfoy property, to transfer the loyalty of the wards to you. But the other one? The one they were curling around you like a cocoon to enact in haste? I know what that means as well as you do."  
  
Shepherd folded his arms, which made the chains rattle, and tried to make him back down with another glare. Harry sat there, and continued with the calm, relentless voice that had been his best tactic among the Aurors when questioning suspects.  
  
"I know that you were going to draw on the magic of your allies--I'm sorry," he added, as Shepherd shifted and made the chains rattle again. "Should I call them your  _associates?_ Your  _donors?_ You don't want to name them that way, but they're people who you owe money to, I'm certain. Your magic is declining. Or at least it was too small to handle the burden of the wards and the Malfoy family magic."  
  
"You're wrong," Shepherd said, but his voice was a tiny thing that lost itself a few centimeters from his mouth. Harry knew what he had said more from the shape of his lips than from the sound.  
  
"What is it, then?" Harry asked. "The Devouring Plague?" That was a disease that weakened magic, and which couldn't actually be caught, despite its name; it simply appeared randomly in some families. "Some curse that hit you? Someone taking your magic as payment?"  
  
Shepherd flinched so hard that he nearly rammed his head into the wall. Harry smiled. "Ah," he said, barely moving his own lips.  
  
He knew he had a crack in the facade Shepherd had tried to present. More than a lucky guess, more than simply the reason that Shepherd might have chanced this, it was the thing that made Shepherd shiver and stare at the ground. In an Auror case, this was usually the point where Harry would have a full confession.  
  
Shepherd, though, rocked himself, and said nothing. Harry sighed. It  _was_ true that he couldn't use one of the Aurors' time-honored techniques: promising to find and try the person who had betrayed their suspect. Shepherd already knew that Harry and Draco probably wouldn't be turning him over to the Ministry, the way they hadn't with his assassin.  
  
"Who took it?" he whispered.  
  
Shepherd shook his head, and kept staring at the floor. Harry sighed again. Perhaps the name didn't matter, although he still planned to give Shepherd the Veritaserum. After all, that person had done something to Shepherd, and hadn't necessarily played any part in the attacks on Draco and Harry.  
  
"Why were you important enough to your allies to have so much time and effort spent on you?" he asked. "Surely the spells to control the dragon alone, and to have the Dragon-Keepers follow and attend on it, cost them more than they could ever hope to gain from you."  
  
Rock. Stare. Harry wondered if he had gone too far in guessing the truth, if Shepherd had something of the Malfoy pride, and the crack he had seen had actually been Shepherd breaking down to the point that he lost hope.  
  
Harry half-closed his eyes and thought. Draco had told him Shepherd was poor, and from there had come the whole theory that he was in debt to someone and those people would lend Shepherd magic and money to get their money back if he could step into the Malfoy fortune. Even the coordinated attacks on both Draco and Harry had made sense with that theory. If Draco was dead, they would still need to kill Harry before Shepherd could inherit, and if Harry died, then there was the chance that Draco would accept and marry his cousin.  
  
But money wasn't the only thing the Malfoys had. And if Shepherd really had married Draco right after the collapse of the wards, then the family would still have been relatively poor thanks to the losses Harry had inflicted on them. Draco would have had to spend the Galleons he had on acquiring a new wand, repairing the wards, and Healers for his mother.  
  
 _What else do the Malfoys have?_  
  
 _Secrets. Artifacts._  
  
Harry slapped his forehead. He had committed the sin that all his teachers during the Auror program had always told him he was too quick to commit, latching onto one theory and charging off after it.  
  
"No wonder they wanted you alive," he told Shepherd softly. "They would need you and your Malfoy blood to touch whatever artifact it is, wouldn't they? Maybe they thought they could take Draco at first, when the wards fell, but then they went back up too quickly and he proved that he had a new and powerful ally."  
  
Shepherd stared at him. "You're a Legilimens," he whispered. "You're reading my mind."  
  
"No," Harry said. "I was an Auror. That's all."  
  
"Get out of my head." Shepherd's voice crept up slowly, and then in a shrieking spiral. " _Get out of my head!_ "  
  
It would be useless to try and feed him Veritaserum now. Harry retreated from the cellar room, and closed the door on him. Draco, waiting outside and leaning against the wall, lifted his head quickly and stared at Harry.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. "I think I may know some of their motives. We can question the others, but they're unlikely to give us more concrete information. What kind of heirlooms or artifacts do you have that your enemies would kill to possess?"  
  
From the shadow that rippled across Draco's face, Harry thought he probably knew.


	32. An Heirloom

"I suppose some people would call it powerful," Draco said, and touched the torch beside the door of the vault. At once all the torches on all the walls lit, casting flickering blue light around the room. "But my family hasn't had much use for it in the last few decades, when we made our political power by bribery."  
  
"Why?" Harry ducked under his arm and stood looking around the vault. Draco saw more curiosity than possessiveness in his eyes; he looked as though he was probably thinking of the vault as belonging to another family, not one he was part of. "If it's powerful--"  
  
"It kills," Draco interrupted. "That's  _all_ it does. I can see why my enemies might want it, but it became unacceptable to use in a pure-blood world with lots of bans on murder."  
  
Harry started and turned around. After a moment, he nodded. "I see. So where is this, and why is it so important?"  
  
Draco led his way through the shelves and casks and trunks of the vault. His father had believed in organization, and treasures that would have been displayed openly in his grandfather's time had retreated behind walls of wood and steel. Harry followed him, glancing around at the polished stone of the walls and floor.  
  
"What?" Draco added after a moment, catching his stare and making Harry look at him with his own steady glare, instead of permitting him to look away.  
  
"I just wondered why you didn't sell some of the artifacts in here rather than marrying me for my money." Harry shrugged with one shoulder, his face blank from what seemed like the pressure of conflicting emotions rather than because he didn't want Draco to know what he was feeling. "I mean--that would have spared you from marrying someone you despised at the time, and leave you open for an alliance with someone else."  
  
Draco sighed. "It's not exactly a treasure vault. These heirlooms can't be sold, for the most part. They're attuned to the family, and someone who's not a Malfoy can't use them. And as for selling them to relatives, Aurelius is my closest relative, and you  _know_ he doesn't have the money to afford them."  
  
"Not even collectors might want them?" Harry was staring at the shut wooden lid of a trunk as though wondering what hid inside.  
  
Draco stopped walking, and Harry stopped walking perforce, since he would have bumped into Draco otherwise. Draco turned around and held his eyes. "It distresses me when you talk about yourself this way, you know," he said.  
  
"What way?" Harry blinked at him.  
  
"As though you were a block on what I wanted to do with my life," Draco said, deciding that bluntness was the best way to work with this new-minted Malfoy. There hadn't been a Malfoy with a gift for bluntness since his Great-great-aunt Lucretia, but from the way Harry had handled Blaise, Draco knew his talents lay in that direction. "As though it would have been so much easier for me to sell my family's heirlooms than marry you, as if this is a huge imposition and something I'm secretly longing to be free of."  
  
Harry licked his lips. "I just thought--I was asking why you  _didn't_ do certain things, that was all. It seemed that you came to me and asked me to be your demi-husband in the first throes of grief. Maybe that wasn't the best thing you could have done. The best thing for your family, I mean."  
  
"You brought me  _strength_ ," Draco said, wondering if that was what Harry didn't understand. "Strength, magic, power, is and always has been more valuable than money. Of course, I needed the money to buy a new wand and hire Healers for Mother. But your magic is worth more than that."  
  
"And the heirlooms are a source of strength, too." Harry nodded thoughtfully. "I see." He turned his back as if he would move away among the trunks and boxes.  
  
Draco caught his arm. "You understand what I'm saying? That the strength that you used to confront Blaise and stand up to the Ministry is what's most valuable about you?"  
  
"That kind of strength, sure," Harry said, and his arm seemed to go almost limp in Draco's grip. "What concerned me was that you were talking about magic, and you know I'm not that powerful."  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes, but didn't see the point in challenging Harry's delusion right now. Still, someday he would. He let go of Harry's arm and stepped back instead. "All right. Look in that cabinet that stands near the back of the room, on the left."  
  
Harry walked slowly towards it. The dark glass in the wooden panels of the cabinet seemed to concern him. He glanced over his shoulder at Draco, who nodded patiently. Harry reached out and laid his hand on the lock of the cabinet as though expecting sparks to leap out and shock him.  
  
Nothing of the sort happened, of course. Draco would never have risked his husband that way. Instead, the lock clicked open and hung awkwardly by one side. Harry pushed it out of the way and bent down so that he was looking through the small gap the door had made as it swung open with the weight of the lock.   
  
He started back and whipped around to stare at Draco. "That can't be what it looks like," he whispered.  
  
Draco moved forwards to stand beside him, and reached out to pick up the delicate figurine that stood on the highest shelf in the cabinet. It thrummed, as always. Draco knew it was the magic it possessed that made it seem to do so, but it felt like blood running through veins. He traced his fingers over the scales and held it out to Harry.  
  
"Surely only someone Malfoy by blood can touch it?" Harry whispered. "Otherwise, what did they need Shepherd for?"  
  
"Someone who's a part of the Malfoy family can touch it," Draco corrected. "Blaise would have been able to, if he married me. My mother could. It's all right, Harry. You're enough of a Malfoy for this."  
  
Harry parted his lips and reached out to accept the dragon. The figurine wasn't a close match for any living species, but Draco had always thought it resembled the Peruvian Vipertooth the most, with long, delicate fangs sticking out from its upper jaw. Its color was a strange mixture of grey and white; it was made of crystals that turned a smoky shade as the body coiled down from the slender neck to the lifted haunches. The dragon lay with its neck turned back over its body, mouth open, throat flexed in a way that Draco knew meant a living dragon would have breathed fire.  
  
"And this does what it looks like it does?" Harry still held the dragon gingerly, though now more as if he might drop and shatter it than as if he was afraid it would come to life in his hands. "Summons a dragon to your aid?"  
  
"Summons a dragon that kills who you tell it to kill," Draco said. "I don't know if the enchantment was there already when my ancestors acquired the dragon or if it was something they cast to try and limit its power." Harry opened his mouth, but Draco pushed on. "They might want to limit its power because they wanted to show that they were being good sports, that they respected the Ministry's laws about figurines like these, that they didn't want too much power--any and all of those."  
  
"I'm surprised you didn't run for it when  _their_ dragon attacked the Manor."  
  
"There wasn't time," Draco said. "Even if there had been, this dragon only kills human enemies. Not dragons, not house-elves, not peacocks." That last statement at least drew a small smile from Harry. "I can make an educated guess about why my enemies want it. But it's useless to me."  
  
Harry looked up, his eyes intense. "That's right," he whispered. "You couldn't--even in the worst moments of your life, you couldn't bring yourself to kill someone, any more than you could bring yourself to torture them."  
  
Draco straightened his back. He didn't understand the tone in Harry's voice, but he could answer it. "Yes, you can call me a coward if you want. I'm used to hearing that by now."  
  
"That was the thing furthest from my mind," Harry told him with a faint smile, and handed the dragon back to him. "I was going to call you someone who's too moral to have any use for this thing, but you can cling to the familiar label, if you want."  
  
"Not  _moral_ , exactly," Draco said, and placed the dragon in its cabinet again. He kept his face half-turned away from Harry, because he thought it would be embarrassing if Harry saw his expression right now. "Fear was a large part of it."  
  
"But you held on through it, and made the right decisions."  
  
Draco let go and smiled in spite of himself. "If you're so determined to praise me, then who am I to resist?" He lifted his arm, looped it around Harry's neck, and drew down Harry's face so he could kiss him. Harry went with only a small protest, quickly muffled against Draco's mouth, and forgotten as their tongues worked each other.  
  
Harry pulled back at last, touched his lips with the back of his hand as though astonished to feel the wetness there, and then shook his head. "Who would have known about the dragon? Outside your family, I mean? Did Aurelius tell them,  _could_ he have told them, or would they have approached him and started asking on their own?"  
  
Draco sighed a bit that that was all he would get, but he had to admit that a dungeon treasure vault wasn't the most romantic place in the house. "They could have known, but so could Aurelius," he responded, locking the cabinet again. "The dragon is fairly famous. The last time it was used was in the nineteenth century."  
  
Harry nodded, his eyes bright and distant and inwards-looking. "You're  _sure_ this is what they would have wanted, instead of something else? It just seems that we've had wrong theories so far, and I don't want to again."  
  
"I'm sure," Draco said, and quelled the impulse to reach up and touch Harry's face, to bring him out of his thinking daze. "This is the only weapon that's powerful enough to kill so many people at once that they would have needed Aurelius to reach. The others are more--more stealable."  
  
Harry grinned at him. "I don't think that's a word."  
  
"It's one now," Draco said haughtily, and turned his back. "Come on. We have a lot of people locked up in the dungeons now--Robbs, Blaise, Aurelius, and those people he had with him. We have to decide what to do with them."  
  
"I'd recommend  _Obliviating_ Robbs and dropping her someplace in another country," Harry said shortly. "She was guilty of trying to kill me, but she only did it for money and she shouldn't be a danger to us again. I  _would_ recommend taking her to the Ministry, but God knows that they probably wouldn't actually do anything."  
  
Draco nodded, silently proud that Harry had learned that much distrust, so fast, of the place where he used to work. "I want a certain, specific revenge on Blaise. Will you leave me to take it?"  
  
Harry frowned at him. " _Can_ you? I just wondered, when you worried about interrogating Robbs--"  
  
"I can do this much," Draco said, and winced a little when he heard the frosty tone his voice had assumed. "Sorry. But the kind of revenge I have in mind is one that's private, not torture, and which Blaise will remember for a very long time."  
  
"Will it be enough to keep him from trying to retaliate at you and the family?"  
  
"Yes." Draco smiled, content. He had wondered if he could cast the necessary spells with his new wand, but after how well the basilisk wand had obeyed him during the attack, he no longer really worried. "I  _do_ think that you should stay out of the way and not ask about details, though. He might be humiliated enough to retaliate at you if he thinks you know."  
  
Harry blinked, but said, "All right. And Aurelius and the rest of them?"  
  
"That's harder," Draco admitted. "I don't want to kill my cousin. I'm not sure I could, as you so eloquently pointed out earlier."  
  
"I could kill him for you if it was necessary, like in the middle of battle." Harry folded his arms and leaned against the wall of the vault. "But otherwise, I'd be reluctant. Maybe you'll need him as an heir, someday, if I die."  
  
Draco said, "You won't, as long as you don't insist on taking ridiculous chances." He moved on before Harry could say anything about how the chances he took weren't  _that_ ridiculous. "I do think that Aurelius needs a long stretch away from anyone who could find him and use him against us again. A Memory Charm and dropping him off in another country, the way you suggested with Robbs, should work."  
  
Harry nodded. "Fine. The others?"  
  
"The others," Draco said, rolling his wand between his hands, "need intimidation. I'm going to leave that up to you, and I don't care how you do it."  
  
"All right," Harry said quietly. A moment later, his face caught in a struggle as though he had almost decided against it, he reached out and squeezed Draco's shoulder. "We do make a good team, don't we?"  
  
Draco kissed his cheek. "The best."  
  
*  
  
“What are you going to do with me?"  
  
Robbs's question was subdued. Harry didn't look at her as he moved around the room, glancing carefully at the torch brackets and the stones in the walls. He wanted to make sure that he didn't accidentally take her somewhere that would look like the last room at the Manor she had stayed in. Such accidents sometimes triggered someone to force their way past the blocks on their memories. Harry wanted these problems to go away, leave them alone, and  _stop_ being problems.  
  
"Take you somewhere else," Harry said, not looking at her. "We're not going to kill you, but we can't exactly have someone who would take money to assassinate us striking at our backs, either."  
  
"I told you. I only took money to kill you, not Malfoy. He could set me free and be perfectly satisfied that I would never come back."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, keeping his face turned away. He had never subscribed to the theory that only stupid people did things like becoming hired assassins, because he'd hunted Dark wizards who could lay a devious plot. But they did seem to come out with some of the stupidest statements.  
  
"You took money to kill me out of desperation. If you get poor and desperate again, then the same thing might happen to my husband." Harry turned around and shook his head at her. "You took money to kill someone who a big part of the wizarding world still reveres. My husband's family is despised by a lot of people, and some of them wouldn't mourn if every Malfoy died tomorrow. I think it's  _more_ likely that they would approach you about him than me."  
  
Robbs sat up in her bonds. "But I won't do it again. What do you want me to do, swear an Unbreakable Vow?"  
  
It was an alternative Harry hadn't considered. But he'd had enough of Vows like that, considering what happened to both Snape and Dumbledore. "No," he said shortly. "You'll keep your life. That's more than you deserve, considering I could have killed you in battle and you used Dark magic to try and murder me."  
  
"I was  _desperate_."  
  
"I don't fucking care," Harry said, and discovered a certain sense of freedom in saying it. Now that he was no longer being forced to act as the Ministry's conscience, it seemed he didn't have to care as much about the sob stories people were always telling him. "Lots of people are, and don't try to murder me."  
  
"You only care about yourself?" Robbs had stopped struggling and was watching him with a hawk's eye. "Not other people anymore? Even your critics say that you're more compassionate than that."  
  
 _She tried to_ murder  _you_ , Draco's voice sneered in Harry's head, and he nodded in response to that and not what Robbs had said. "I'm sure they do. Because that lets them play me for a sucker, the way you're trying."  
  
Robbs opened her mouth to frame another denial, but Harry had had enough of a conversation so pointless. He thought he had memorized the room thoroughly, and he already had the location of an Apparition point in mind, a small mountainside in France where he had once located a buried body on a case.  
  
" _Obliviate._ "  
  
The Memory Charm always felt weird leaving his wand, like a cold trickle of wriggling water, but it functioned as it was supposed to. When it hit Robbs, her face went slack, and she breathed at him, blinking slowly.  
  
"You started drinking a fortnight ago," Harry told her calmly. "You don't remember much other than that. You know you had some money, but you spent it somewhere. Now you're in France and you want to stay a while before you go home, because you've already lost a lot, you might as well experience some more."  
  
Robbs nodded dreamily. Harry cut her bonds, picked her up by her arm, and Apparated. The wards opened to permit him passage, as he had envisioned, and a moment later they did stand on the hillside in France.  
  
It was soft and sunlit here, although a cool wind seemed to promise rain. Robbs stood up and blinked around as though she had no idea where to go next. Well, that would be consistent with the story Harry had told her.  
  
Harry cast the wand at her feet and Apparated away. He wondered, as he went, what Draco was doing with Blaise. He almost wished he could watch, but Draco had been serious about needing privacy.   
  
*  
  
"Draco."  
  
Blaise sounded hoarse. Draco discounted that. Blaise was the one who had taught them tricks like moving their stomachs in a certain way so they would vomit and could "legitimately" skive off class. Making his voice hoarse so that he would sound like he hadn't had a drink in hours wasn't beyond him.  
  
He took a chair across from the small cage in which Blaise sat and laid a hand for a moment over the Malfoy crest done in silver on his white shirt. It seemed to give Harry additional confidence and assurance that he was a Malfoy, and Draco sat there for a minute or so, drawing on it, reminding himself that he was the head of an ancient family that had always survived the challenges thrown at it. It would survive this one.  
  
In the end, he felt ready to raise his eyes and face his old friend. Blaise's cage was made of thin silver bars and fairly roomy, but at any attempt to use magic or physical force on them, the bars would contract. Blaise had a small bed, a chamberpot, and a few fairy tale books in the prison. Twice a day, Ossy brought him food. That had been all the luxury Draco had felt like affording him.  
  
"You wanted a pure-blood family to establish yourself," Draco told him. "You should have done your research more carefully and found out what was lacking in mine. I didn't have the money or the power to repair my own wards without Harry."  
  
"I would have married you after you had it," Blaise said. "All Potter had to do was stop getting in the way."  
  
"Malfoy," Draco said. "His name is Malfoy now." He felt each little slip-up and mistake Blaise made piling on his resolve like stones. They were weighting the balance, tilting the scale towards a harsher revenge.  
  
Blaise shrugged. "He's a Mudblood. I can never think of him like that."  
  
"We marry for power," Draco said, as delicately as he could. "Blood is important, but it only became overriding for pure-bloods in the last few generations when most of them were wealthy enough and strong enough not to need the most magical candidates they could find. Don't you  _remember_ your childhood history lessons?"  
  
Blaise looked at him with shiny, crocodile eyes. "My mother had more important things to teach me."  
  
Draco nodded. He had suspected that. And that made the decision to go ahead with his vengeance easier than any other he'd ever made. He rose to his feet in a leisurely way and reached for the buttons of his shirt.  
  
"What are you--" Blaise fell silent as Draco began to strip. He made sure his shirt revealed all the pale skin that he normally hid, even the silvery scars. Blaise stared, and Draco cast the first spell of the curse. Slowly, Blaise's hands crept up to grip the bars of the cage, ignoring the way they vibrated in warning.  
  
Draco touched his heart and cast the second part of the curse. Blaise winced as it hit him, but he was too occupied in staring at Draco to really remark on it.  
  
The third part of the curse had to be spoken aloud, since Draco didn't want to risk it going wrong by trying to cast it nonverbally. " _Cruor nefas_ ," he whispered, and the black halo appeared around Blaise, winking out in a second.  
  
Blaise gasped aloud and reeled back from the bars of the cage. Now, too late, he was paying attention. "What did you do?" he demanded.  
  
"Inflicted you with the Blood-Turning Curse," Draco said, and smiled at him. "Since it leaves no physical marks and doesn't compel the will, it's not technically considered Dark magic, you know."  
  
Blaise stared at him without expression, but Draco had become an expert in reading him years ago, and could make out the way his nostrils were widening along with his eyes, the way his hands clenched in front of him. The Blood-Turning Curse would give the victim a longing to possess the caster of the curse, a pining that could never be fulfilled because of the second part. That ensured that any move to hurt the caster would begin to drain the victim's magic.  
  
But the curse was named after the third part, which gave the victim the silent but irrational conviction that he was no longer pure-blood. Like the pining after the caster, it wasn't something he  _had_ to listen to, but it was something he had to feel, and the doubt would murmur in the back of his thoughts, night and day.  
  
"My mother could destroy you for this," Blaise whispered.  
  
"The Blood-Turning Curse covers harm inflicted by second parties as well," Draco said lightly, and threw Blaise's wand through the bars, at the same time dissolving the cage. "Get out of here."  
  
"There are counters to that curse," Blaise hissed, even as he snatched up his wand and began to sidle towards the door as though he distrusted his hands if he came near Draco.  
  
"I wish you luck in finding one when no one has for six hundred years," Draco said politely, and waited until the door closed behind Blaise before he shut his eyes and slumped against the wall.  
  
Hard to do, for someone who disliked torture as much as he did. But the only way he could think of to safeguard them from Blaise in the future, and satisfying in a cold place in his heart, one that seemed to have started existing since Harry came into the family.  
  
 _I would do much for him that I would not do for myself.  
_


	33. Long Confessions

“Do you want to tell me what you did to Zabini?”  
  
Harry’s voice was low and undemanding. Draco sat in front of the fire in the library where they had retreated, and looked into the flames, and said nothing, though. The moment when he wanted to take revenge on Blaise had passed, and with it had passed his resolve. He didn’t know what he would say if he opened his mouth to talk about it now. He didn’t know what Harry would accept.  
  
He was snappish and hunching, and that made him feel vulnerable. He didn’t like the steady light in Harry’s eyes. He didn’t like anything about what he had done, or the haunting fear in the back of his mind that he might have made the wrong decision.  
  
“You don’t have to talk about it.” Harry leaned forwards a little, drawing Draco’s eyes. “But I’d like to know.”  
  
Draco could feel his breath quickening as he swallowed. Harry’s eyes were wide and gentle, compassionate, and he looked as though he’d like to reach out and stroke Draco’s fringe back from his forehead. It was the way he had looked when Draco went to bed with him for the first time, or the way he’d looked in hospital after Draco was stabbed at the Ministry.  
  
“There were reasons I wanted to do it alone,” Draco said. “I don’t think it fits into torture, or I couldn’t have done it, but you might not approve.”  
  
Harry blinked. “That would stop you?”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes, glad that they had something to fight about. That always made him feel better. “I already did it, so no, obviously. But just as you were afraid of the way I might look at you after you forced the Veritaserum down Robbs’s throat, I’m a little afraid of the way you might look at me over this.”  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair and seemed to think about that for a while. Draco drank the water Ossy had brought to ease his throat. He’d thought about asking for something stronger, but it was still some hours until dinner, and Ossy had Views about alcohol.  
  
“All right,” Harry said. “I can’t promise that I wouldn’t disapprove of some things you could do, some Dark curses, but I’d still like to hear.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows. “And you won’t glare?”  
  
“I can’t promise that,” Harry repeated, in that gentle, infuriating way. “All I can say is that I’d like to hear about it, put the invitation out there. You don’t have to tell me. I can’t force you. I’d still like to hear it.”  
  
 _Sometimes being married to a Gryffindor is more trouble than it’s worth._ But Draco had come this far, and Harry’s face was almost neutral, really, laid open like this. Certainly quiet, more hopeful than he had thought it would be, gentler. Accepting. And if Draco couldn’t find acceptance from the demi-husband who had become so strangely attached to him, where would he find it?  
  
So Draco told him about the Blood-Turning Curse, and if he leaned back in his chair as the story went on and contemplated his fingers, laced in front of him, well, that was his business, wasn’t it? Harry could still turn away or make disgusted facial expressions, and this way, Draco wouldn’t have to see them.  
  
*  
  
Harry had never heard of the Blood-Turning Curse. Listening to it, he thought he could see why. He was an expert mostly on the kinds of curses that could be performed in battle, and you wouldn’t use that there. You wouldn’t have the time to finish uttering a three-part curse, for one thing.  
  
But that Draco had done it to Zabini…  
  
 _He must hate him now. And he said that he was his friend before, or at least Zabini seemed convinced they were close enough that Draco would have been glad to marry him._  
  
Harry rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. He knew that he would probably phrase this time the wrong way and alienate Draco, at least a little bit, but he couldn’t think of any other way to ask what he wanted to ask. So he came out with it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I—is there something else you could have done that would have allowed you to keep his friendship? Did you think you had to use the Blood-Turning Curse because he tried to attack me? Because I could probably protect myself, if you want to take it back and use a less violent punishment.”  
  
Draco stared at him. He had been looking at his hands the whole time he told the story to Harry, but now he sat up in his chair and pointed his face at Harry like a hawk getting ready to dive off its branch. “Explain what you mean,” he whispered.  
  
“I mean,” Harry said, “that Zabini was your friend, and I would  _hate_ to lose a friend like that. Did you want to do something else? I could protect myself if you wanted to use something else.”  
  
“This is exactly what I hate,” Draco said, and his hands crushed together in his lap.  
  
“What?” Harry asked, in honest bewilderment.   
  
“You acting like you’re less important than anyone else,” Draco said, and jammed his glass on the table—which told Harry a little about how upset he was, because normally he would have more of a care for inherited Malfoy furniture—and leaping to his feet to pace back and forth. “What the fuck can I  _say_ to convince you that I would do anything for you? That my demi-husband is more important than someone who admitted he would only take and not give if he married me?”  
  
“It’s just,” Harry said, floundering a little. He could feel the back of his neck tingling the way it normally only did when he could feel an enemy staring at him.  _He would do anything for me? Really?_ “I want you to have everything you want. Within reason, I mean. Your friends  _and_ your demi-marriage, your wand  _and_ your wards back. I don’t want you to feel like I’m limiting your choices.”  
  
Draco spun around. “I don’t feel that way. Satisfied?”  
  
“Don’t you want Zabini back as a friend?” Harry countered. “Maybe you weren’t really close to him, but he’s still someone you’ve known for a long time. Don’t you want him back?”  
  
Draco said, “I don’t consider anyone who tries to kill me a  _friend_. Or who tries to kill my husband, if you really want to make that distinction,” he added, which Harry was indeed opening his mouth to do. “If you would consider someone a friend even after that, then I really have to worry about the intensity of your friendships.”  
  
Harry huffed and crossed his arms. He was saying the wrong thing all the time, and now Draco was the one who seemed serious and honest and adult in a way that Harry didn’t think he would able to compare to. “I might think about whether my friend was under the Imperius Curse, or something like that.”  
  
Draco laughed, showing teeth that seemed whiter and sharper than Harry remembered them. “Blaise was under the influence of good, honest ambition. He admitted as much in that conversation you overheard.” He took a long, sliding step towards Harry. “What is this  _really_ about?”  
  
“It’s about wanting you to have everything you want!” Harry snapped. “I  _said_ that already! You should have your friends, and if this demi-marriage is going to cost you your friends, then I wonder if—”  
  
Draco made a sound that Harry thought would have been appropriate for suddenly seeing Shepherd appear in front of them armed with his wand again, and then crossed the distance between them. His hands clamped down on Harry’s arms, and Harry winced despite himself. Draco shook him, furious and frantic, leaning in close enough that Harry’s eyes crossed trying to keep up with him.  
  
“You keep acting like you’re the worst thing in my life, or that I  _must_ regret the marriage to you, or something like that,” Draco said, in what wasn’t a shout only because it was so intense and so close. “What can I do to make you see that  _it’s not like that_? Do you want me to make a love confession? Get down on my knees and propose real marriage? Take you to bed and fuck the daylights out of you?  _What_ , Harry? I don’t know what can make you see that, if my words don’t.”  
  
By the end of his monologue, he’d let Harry go and turned away with his head bowed between his shoulders like a turtle. Harry rubbed the bruises Draco’s hands had left on his arms and took a deep breath.  
  
 _All right. I don’t have the right words, but maybe Draco didn’t think his were, either, and he gave them to me anyway. So I’ll give him some._  
  
“I just want you to have everything you want,” he repeated quietly to Draco’s back. “If that’s me—shit, Draco, good. But I’m still upset that Zabini was such a wanker and you couldn’t stay his friend, too.”  
  
Draco turned slowly back towards him. His arms were still folded, but he wasn’t ducking his head as much anymore. “And if I tell you that I don’t want Blaise’s friendship back ever again, and that’s done, and I’m  _glad_ it’s done, if he could strike at my family the way he did?”  
  
Harry nodded. “That would help. I would still worry about it hurting you, but I do that with all my friends.” He tried to smile.  
  
Draco moved a step closer to him, eyes bright and interested. “And do you have sex with all your friends?”  
  
Harry knew he was blushing, but that hadn’t been something he expected Draco to say. “There are a lot of people who would say that that didn’t count as real sex,” he muttered, to have something to say. “I mean— _I_  think it does, but you don’t have to worry about my doing it with my other friends. Maybe you have, though. Um.”  
  
Draco was smiling at him now, and in a way that made Harry think his words might have been  _too_ serious. He reached out and put his hand on Harry’s right shoulder, then moved in even closer and put his hand on Harry’s left. He left them both there, stroking slowly up and down, which Harry could feel, even through the cloth. He was shivering by now.  
  
“I’m sorry about losing Blaise, to an extent,” Draco said. “I really thought I could trust him more than that. And I can’t pretend that I won’t ever wonder what he’s doing or what he would think and say about something.”  
  
He moved closer, and forced Harry’s legs open. Harry had to cling to Draco’s shoulders in turn to keep upright. Draco touched Harry’s cheek briefly with his chin, then moved sideways to whisper into his ear.  
  
“But I’ll always choose my family. And you’re family, now.”  
  
Harry thought about the things Draco had been willing to do for his parents during sixth year, and swallowed. “Just don’t put yourself in extreme danger for me,” he said, moving his hands around to Draco’s back. Draco’s shoulders didn’t feel broad enough to carry everything they needed to.  
  
“If you return the favor.”  
  
“I can protect you,” Harry said. “I don’t know if you could do the same thing for me. I mean,” he added with extreme haste as Draco moved away and stared at him, “not without getting yourself into trouble. I’m a trained Auror.”  
  
“Who gets wounded and into trouble anyway,” Draco said dryly, while his fingers pinched at Harry’s shoulders.  
  
“Yeah, but—I just really want to protect you,” Harry said.  
  
“And I want to do the same thing.” Draco was giving him a pleasant smile that Harry recognized from some of their fights in Hogwarts. “If we just agree that we can both do it and we’ll fight side-by-side, then we’ll get along a lot better.”  
  
Harry thought about the way those fights in Hogwarts had gone, and ended up nodding. He was anxious to avoid another one, if he could. And not just because he and Draco were married, now.  
  
“Good,” Draco whispered. He stepped up to Harry again, and put his hands back in place on his shoulders. Harry reached up to clasp his hands there, and closed his eyes. “I hope I’ve sufficiently reassured you that I don’t regret the loss of Blaise, compared to what I might have lost in you.”  
  
Harry hesitated, then nodded. “You’ve convinced me of that,” he murmured.   
  
“Good,” Draco repeated, and kissed him.  
  
Harry held him still, combing his fingers through Draco’s hair. Draco’s tongue was thick and sweet and wonderful in Harry’s mouth, and he found that he didn’t want to give the kiss up. When Draco started to pull back, Harry chased his mouth, and Draco laughed and used his grip on Harry’s shoulders to hold him back this time.  
  
Harry opened his eyes. Draco’s hair stuck out like straw, and he was smiling so hard that Harry reached out to touch the smile, to make sure that it was real. Draco caught his hand and kissed his knuckles, then lowered Harry’s hand back to his side. His eyes were shining, were warm, and Harry leaned forwards a little, waiting to hear what he would say.  
  
Then a sharp pop cut the air, and Ossy’s voice said, “Mistress Narcissa is being awake, and is asking for Master Draco and Master Harry.” He managed to make it sound as though it was momentous and ordinary at once, which Harry thought a pretty good trick for a house-elf.   
  
Draco blinked, then stepped back from Harry and bowed slightly to him. “It seems that you’re going to meet my mother properly this time, without her lying to a Dark Lord for you. Will you come with me?”  
  
Although he badly wanted to know what Draco had been about to say, Harry wondered how in the world Draco could think that he  _wouldn’t_ want to come with him. He reached out and caught Draco’s hands, swinging them slightly back and forth. “Of course I do. If only to show her that I can be polite to my mother-in-law.”  
  
*  
  
Narcissa was sitting up when they came into her room, and looked better than when Draco had last seen her, with fewer shadows beneath her eyes and her hands less like twisted claws. She held a steaming mug of tea in her palms. Now and then she lifted it to her lips and sipped. Draco wanted to explode in pride that she was feeding herself, but he contented himself with catching her eyes and grinning.  
  
His mother understood. She had always been quick at games like that. She gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned to Harry. “Mister Potter.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, but shut it, because Harry had already bowed and said, “Harry Malfoy, but I appreciate that it’ll take you some time to get used to it. It did for me.”  
  
 _And that was a test,_ Draco saw, from the quick, critical way that Narcissa’s eyes flickered over Harry. Well. Harry had passed it. Draco didn’t think his mother could have gone so quickly from “Black” to “Malfoy” when she married.  
  
“I understand I have you to thank for this,” Narcissa whispered, and gestured to her white hair and age-marked skin.  
  
Harry held her eyes and nodded without flinching. “That was the major reason I wanted to marry Draco and make up for it. I couldn’t stand to think that I had deprived you of your right to live as long as you naturally would.”  
  
Narcissa examined him again. Draco watched him and wondered where this sudden graciousness had come from—but he thought he knew, when he considered it more deeply. Harry was treating Narcissa like a potential enemy, with the same distant courtesy he’d probably use to someone at the Ministry. Draco had forced Harry to engage with him at a deeper, more personal level from the time he had come to see him at Weasley’s bedside.  
  
 _I want him to engage with Mother like that, too._  
  
Draco had to admit that it would be hard as long as Narcissa was intent on testing Harry, though. He took a step closer to Harry and caught his mother’s eye, hoping she would read the signals and give Harry some time and space to react in a different way. Narcissa flicked him the edge of a smile and faced Harry again.  
  
“It is good that you are making up for it in a way that pays the debts and respects the old pure-blood ways, at least,” she said. “I am somewhat surprised that you agreed to this, and that your friends let you.”  
  
“I never meant to let my friends have any say in who I married.” Harry’s voice was polite, friendly, easy. “I got married somewhat sooner than I would have otherwise when Draco came asking for my hand, of course. I would have done something else if there was a different way to solve the problem. But Draco assured me there wasn’t.”  
  
Another moment of silence, while his mother sipped her tea. Draco could have shaken his head, and wished he dared do so. Harry could respond to this kind of challenge all day. He could answer pointed questions, and he wouldn’t mean any of the answers. He could smile, and he would never mean it.  
  
Draco spoke before his mother could finish the swallows of tea. “What my mother wants to know, Harry, is whether you regret allying with us.”  
  
“Regret marrying you? No.” Harry smiled at him. “But I thought I would when I first married you, of course. It wasn’t a promising beginning.” He turned to Narcissa. “Draco hasn’t asked me to do anything that I was really unwilling to do. I hope you won’t, either.”  
  
 _Well, that’s one kind of personal assurance,_ Draco thought, a little dazed, and turned back to Narcissa.  
  
“Perhaps I may come not to regret your introduction into the family, Mr. Malfoy,” Narcissa said, and smiled at Draco, probably because he had about to flinch from her saying “Potter.” “At the moment, I am thinking more of what you cost us than what you brought us.”  
  
“Understandable,” Harry said calmly, before Draco could protest about his wand and the wards. “What would you like me to do?”  
  
“What makes you think that I’d like you to do anything?” Narcissa sipped her tea again. She was using it much the way she had a glass of wine at dinners when his father was free, Draco thought, to shield her mouth and give her hands something to do. He sighed, torn between gladness that she was well enough to do things like that and frustration that she couldn’t accept Harry as the son-in-law he was now.  
  
“Because the questions you’re asking me are all ones that you know the answer to.” Harry watched her unblinking. “So you must want something else, and you’re testing my reactions until we get there.”  
  
Narcissa smiled with the barest curl of her lips. “Very, very good, Mr. Malfoy. There is something I want, in fact.” She set her teacup delicately aside and leaned forwards. “While the strength you’ve brought to the family will sustain us for a time, I think we need something else to make us stronger still.”  
  
“Name it.” Harry watched her like a hovering hawk.  
  
“I’m not sure that you should promise to do it for me before I tell you what it is.” Narcissa pursed her lips thoughtfully.  
  
“That wasn’t a promise.”  
  
Narcissa blinked. Draco blinked. He touched Harry’s back with one hand, slowly, carefully. Harry gave no sign that he noticed. He waited, and he watched Narcissa, and there was a tension in the room that had little to do with the past, Draco thought, staring back and forth between both of these people who were in his family.  
  
“I want you to free my husband,” Narcissa said at last. “He has spent enough time in prison, enough to pay for whatever crimes he might have committed. He deserves to be free, to spend what might be the last years of his life with his wife and son.”  
  
“And his son-in-law?” Harry’s muscles had tensed beneath Draco’s hand the moment Narcissa started speaking, but he didn’t break away. He didn’t sound as though Narcissa’s announcement had surprised him. His voice was very distant, very thin, reminding Draco of some winds he had heard blowing around the Manor on winter nights. Draco eyed him uneasily. Harry said nothing, but Draco didn’t like the glaze in his eyes.  
  
“Lucius will be disappointed, certainly,” Narcissa said, aiming her cup a little at Harry. “But he will adapt, as I have. As I will,” she added, perhaps because she had seen something in Harry’s face that told her he didn’t believe she had adapted to him yet.  
  
Harry nodded, and said nothing for long moments. Then he murmured, “This will take me a short time to think about.”  
  
“What is there to think about?” Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “One member of your beloved new family asks you to do something. And you were willing to marry Draco, to make a much greater sacrifice.”  
  
Harry smiled. Draco shuddered and stepped to the side so that he didn’t have to see it. “I think you know little about what kinds of sacrifices it costs me to make, and what it doesn’t,” Harry murmured. “But I will think about it, because Draco didn’t ask me to do something illegal. You are.”  
  
“I did not say that you could not use legal methods to free him.”  
  
“You implied that I should move quickly,” Harry said gently. “With the line about how you wanted him to spend whatever time he has left with you and Draco. And legal methods would take time.”  
  
“You would surely have to agree that Lucius has paid for his crimes.” Narcissa leaned forwards. “You agreed that Draco and I had.”  
  
Harry stood silent for long moments. Draco had no idea what he was thinking, for the first time in weeks. He stirred, but he didn’t think he could say anything. The tension lay on his tongue like the bit of a bridle, preventing it.  
  
“Neither you nor Draco tried to kill me directly,” Harry said at last. “He did. Neither of you tried to murder one of my friends, not directly.” He glanced at Draco. “There was an accident with poison that could have killed Ron, but he lived. Ginny Weasley wouldn’t have lived if I hadn’t—if there hadn’t been a good bit of luck with the diary.”  
  
“Shall I call in one of my life-debts?” Narcissa asked, soft as new snowfall. “I want my husband back at my side. You are a poor substitute.”  
  
Harry just looked at her, and then he bowed. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said, and walked out of the room.  
  
Draco could feel his mother’s gaze on him. For long moments, he didn’t know what he should do, and he hesitated, with words hovering on his tongue that might not want to speak.  
  
Then he turned and hurried after Harry, telling Ossy and Affy over his shoulder to bring his mother anything she wanted.


	34. Decisions

Harry leaned against the wall of his bedroom and frowned at the ceiling. He supposed he could have thought about what to do while lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, too, but this way meant he had to use more energy, and that was a good thing right now. Use the energy, or explode in magic that wasn’t fair to Draco, either.   
  
Someone knocked.  
  
 _And I really need to stop thinking “someone” when I know perfectly well who it is,_ Harry thought as he opened the door and moved out of the way so Draco could step in. Draco turned around the minute he was inside, studying Harry with narrowed eyes.  
  
“You don’t have to do it,” he said.  
  
Harry moved in, taking the initiative this time, until he could see Draco opening his eyes wide and getting ready to step away from him. Then he stopped. “And what do  _you_  want?” he asked gently. “Your mother asked for this, but do you want your father free, too?” He thought Draco might have some conflict on that score. He would want his father not to suffer, the way he wanted for any member of the family, but it was entirely possible that he also liked being the head of the Malfoy family, the way he had been before Harry wrecked his life.  
  
Draco reached out to take his arms. Harry permitted it. He knew, from a glance into his face, that Draco needed the support.  
  
“I want him free if it could be managed,” Draco said, bowing his head. “But I don’t think it can, and in the meantime, it puts you in danger. I wish my mother had thought of that, that you can’t pay your debts to us if you’re dead.”  
  
“Let’s put her aside for the moment,” Harry said quietly, although he knew it was hard for both of them to do. “What do  _you_ want? Would your father cause you less trouble in Azkaban than out of it? Do you want him out and able to interfere?” He had no idea, he realized, whether Draco ever went to visit him or not. They hadn’t discussed Lucius, and he hadn’t been in the memory that Harry had glimpsed during the demi-marriage ritual.  
  
Draco sighed. “You  _would_ ask the hard question.”  
  
“If you need a little while to answer it, that’s all right.” Harry massaged Draco’s shoulders, then decided he could do it better from the back and moved around him. Draco seemed to droop and melt and flow when Harry touched him, but didn’t actually sit down. So Harry stood there, rubbing his shoulders.  
  
Draco breathed as though he was going to sleep. Harry doubted that, and he waited. Meanwhile, his fingers were growing familiar with the curves of Draco’s flesh and the solidity of his bones, and that wasn’t a bad thing to know.  
  
“I—don’t know,” Draco said at last. “My mother wants it, I think. It’s not just a test. Now that she’s—old, she would feel safer with my father back at her side. But I have to think of the whole family, and she’s one of the people I’m thinking of, not the only one.”  
  
Harry leaned in. “I can help you share the burdens,” he whispered into Draco’s ear. “I’m not Malfoy by blood, but I can help.”  
  
Draco reached back and caught his left hand in a grip so strong that Harry winced. “You’re the one in the heart of the dilemma,” Draco said, in a return whisper. “One of the people I should be protecting, but instead you’re forced into the role of protector. Can you sit back and let someone  _else_ make the decision for once in your life?”  
  
Harry thought about that, his head half-cocked. Draco snorted now and then, as though to show that he wasn’t impressed by Harry’s dithering about, but Harry refused to let himself be hurried. This was too important, that was all.  
  
Finally, he said, “No.”  
  
Draco squeezed hard enough this time to leave bruises on his wrist. Harry opened his mouth to ask how he was supposed to explain  _that_ one to his friends, but Draco was charging on, as irresistible as a stream in full flow. “I think you should,” he whispered fiercely. “You would be happier if you could. If sometimes you trusted other people to make the choice, and went along with it.”  
  
“And that’s something we can talk about some time in the future when I’m being pressured to do that,” Harry said, in a normal voice. “But this time, I have to make the choice, and you can’t spare me from it.”  
  
Draco twisted around to stare up at him from beneath his fringe. Harry’s heat ached, and he licked his lips. Draco didn’t seem to notice. “But were you asking how I felt about it so you would know whether you should make the decision?” he asked. “Or so I could take it away from you?”  
  
Harry kissed his forehead. “Those aren’t at all the same thing. Yes, I do want to know how all the Malfoys feel about it. But that’s to help  _me_ decide what to do, not shove you into my place.”  
  
“I would do it, if I could,” Draco said, his hands tightening now in a way that didn’t hurt, that simply held Harry close and captive. “I would take your place.”  
  
Harry smiled at him. “I know.” He hesitated for a second, then shrugged. They were already in pretty deep with each other. Why not go further? “I think it’s a pretty good definition of love, that you’re willing to do that.”  
  
Draco stared at him with his lips parted a little. Harry wondered if he had mis-stepped after all, and Draco wouldn’t react to that kind of speech because it was too intimate.  
  
Then Draco leaned forwards and whispered directly into Harry’s mouth, “I was wondering which one of us would be the first to say the obvious. I didn’t know that it would be you. I thought you’d need to build up your courage first.” His hands stroked Harry’s face, around the mouth, down from the ears, and he looked as if he would simply give up and kiss him in a second.  
  
Wanting to encourage that, Harry tilted his head and smiled. “Who was actually Sorted into the House that has a reputation for courage, now?”  
  
Draco kissed him hard enough to make Harry’s teeth cut his lips, but it was hard to be angry about that when he had pleasure cutting and curling all around him at the same time—not least, the pleasure that he had successfully distracted Draco from worrying about him. He wanted to be a source of strength and support and happiness to Draco, not fear. Not guilt.  
  
He walked them back towards his bed with his hands on Draco’s shoulders, wondering if they would end up in the same position as before. But Draco seemed to have other ideas, if the way he lifted his head and gasping like a drowning fish was any indication.  
  
“I love you,” he told Harry, so directly that Harry felt a sharp, suspicious sting at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know why the demi-marriage turned into this, but I’m glad it did.” He hesitated, watching Harry for some kind of sign, although Harry didn’t know what it was, and then curled his hand around the nape of Harry’s neck. “If you don’t mind, I want—I want to keep you close. And that’s one reason I’m glad you quit the Aurors. So that we can spend more time together, as well as getting you out of danger.”  
  
Harry blinked, but while he hadn’t expected that from Draco and didn’t know how to respond to it, he had no trouble finding words of his own. “And I’m glad that you suggested it. Even  _if_ ,” he added, beating Draco to it as Draco opened his mouth, “Ron was the one who managed to persuade me. He wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t already told me that it was what you wanted. You worked together.”  
  
Draco’s eyebrows drew together and he puckered his lips as though Harry had just given him sour tea. Harry couldn’t help it, and loosened his hold on Draco’s shoulders to bend over at the waist and laugh. Draco shoved him. Harry kept laughing. Draco shoved him again. This time Harry fell on the bed and laughed up at the ceiling.  
  
“So glad I could amuse you,” Draco muttered, trailing after him and standing by the bed to frown down at him.  
  
“It’s more than that,” Harry said, levering himself up on one elbow and smiling at Draco. “It was the face you made. The  _horror_ that you might work together with Ron on anything. I promise you, he’d feel the same way.”  
  
Draco sat down beside him and trailed a casual finger up his arm. Harry turned his head towards him and kissed the back of his hand. Draco smiled, but his expression was distant, and Harry ended up leaning his chin on Draco’s hand and raising his eyebrows at him.  
  
“We still don’t know who stabbed me at the Ministry,” Draco whispered. “And now what my mother wants with my father…” His voice trailed off, and he looked at Harry with a peculiar, piercing expression. “When are you going to get time to relax and enjoy the benefits of being a Malfoy that you married me for?”  
  
“No reporters have intruded on us yet,” Harry pointed out. “Or Aurors insisting that I need to come back to the Ministry or I’m a traitor. And Ossy has been feeding me more than enough sweets. I like that.”  
  
Draco nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “What are you going to  _do_?”  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he sat up and said, “I can’t do—exactly what she wants. I can do what I think someone who has a connection to the family should do, and something that might reassure her. I can check into the way they’re treating him in Azkaban, and make sure that it’s  _good_ treatment.”  
  
Draco blinked at him. “Why would they tell you?”  
  
Harry smiled and brushed back his fringe to touch the dragon scar. “Some people still remember what this was shaped like,” he said quietly. “And while I’ve changed my name—and I do take pride in that,” he added as he saw the way Draco’s chin started to come up, “to some people, that won’t matter. They’re people I don’t really like associating with. I avoided them when I still worked for the Ministry. But now, that doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Why doesn’t it matter?”  
  
“Because I’m doing it for my family,” Harry said, turning his head around fully to take in Draco’s expression.  
  
Draco had bigger eyes than Harry would have suspected, from the way he was letting them bug out like that. “You have to keep doing things you  _don’t_ want,” he muttered. “I wish I could give you some way to get around that.”  
  
Harry laughed a little. “We’ve hardly had a quiet moment since I married you,” he said. “I don’t blame you for that. I could have been more careful about drawing on everyone’s life-force when I was battling the Dementor ghosts. And there’s always the chance that it’ll calm down soon, and I’ll be able to relax.”  
  
“Why can’t you do exactly what my mother wants?” Draco leaned towards him and lowered his voice.  
  
Harry half-closed his eyes. He didn’t know if the words he said would make any sense to Draco, especially since he had admitted that part of him did want his father free. But he was done keeping secrets from Draco or hoping that they would understand each other by some kind of mental sharing when they’d done no  _talking_. He took a deep breath and began to speak.  
  
“Because he did try to commit murder. If he had stayed in Azkaban and served his first sentence out, after he was caught in the Department of Mysteries, maybe I would feel this was enough time spent there. But I don’t. And he hasn’t—he was a willing Death Eater, Draco. That’s the difference between him and you.”  
  
*  
  
There were a lot of things Draco could have said to that, such as that he had taken the Mark willingly and only resented it later when he realized exactly what service to the Dark Lord entailed, but he didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “You hold him responsible for trying to murder Ginny Weasley?”  
  
Harry opened his eyes and nodded. “He did try. Or at least he didn’t care what the diary did to her.”  
  
“You don’t think he should stay in prison for practicing Dark Arts.” Draco studied Harry intently, although he didn’t know what he was looking for.  
  
Harry snorted at him. “I’m not  _that_ much of a hypocrite. If I was going to arrest everyone who’d done that, I’d have to be in prison, too, and so would my best friends.”  
  
“I didn’t know you felt that way about Dark magic,” Draco murmured, his mind racing, but no coherent words emerging out of the thoughts as yet. “I would have been a little less stiff and formal with you, if I did.”  
  
Harry shrugged, and his mouth twisted. “I was feeling that way for a long time before I quit the Aurors, but as long as I was one, I had to arrest people who practiced it. This is up to  _me,_ though.”  
  
Draco rolled back on the bed to look at him. “You’re more of a hypocrite than I thought you were. Less of the perfect hero.”  
  
Harry nodded in a way that seemed to say he didn’t put much stress on Draco’s words. “And you’re less of the cackling evil monster, or the hapless coward. Maybe if we meet somewhere in the middle, we can make one whole, human person.”  
  
Draco smiled, and let his hand rest on Harry’s shoulder. Harry leaned towards him, but said nothing, and didn’t kiss him, only watching him. Draco took a long breath and reminded himself that he really did feel more content than he had in a long time, despite the crises that pressed all around them.  
  
Then he said, “What happens if checking up on my father in Azkaban won’t satisfy my mother?”  
  
Harry’s eyes went distant. Then he said, “We tell her that when we find it out. And I do the same thing I did to one of my Auror superiors once, when he ordered me to arrest someone he thought  _might_ cause harm to another Auror. She hadn’t actually used any Dark Arts yet, or even threatened him. But they’d dated for a long time before he ended it, and my boss thought it was best if she was shut up before it crossed her mind to hurt him.”  
  
Draco cocked his head. “What did you do?”  
  
Harry faced him. “Told my supervisor that I couldn’t arrest a witch who hadn’t actually done anything yet, and accepted the punishment that he gave me. Which, in this case, was a week off work without pay.”  
  
Draco hesitated. Then he said, “Well, my mother can’t hurt you in the same way, of course. Or punish you in the same way, I should say.”  
  
Harry smiled sadly at him. “I know. I’m not afraid of what she might do to  _me_. I’ve lived with guilt long enough.”  
  
“She wouldn’t curse me, either,” Draco tried to reassure him.  
  
Harry snorted without sound. “If it was only physical harm that I had to worry about, then I wouldn’t be worried at all. I can trust you to take care of yourself in battle, especially with your new wand. But I am worried about the things she might say to you, the guilts she might drag out of you. That  _does_ worry me, Draco.”  
  
Draco caught his hand in a hard grip, and held it there without knowing what to say. At last he muttered, “But you’re still going to go ahead and make a trip to Azkaban to check on the way they’re treating my father, and no more.”  
  
Harry nodded, his eyes shadowed. “Because of what you said about your father, and your lack of undying desire for him to be released. I can do nothing to change what your mother thinks of me, right now, or what she wants. This is the only thing that makes sense.” He hesitated. “Do you think he would take over the family again, if he was free?”  
  
“That would depend on what he wanted, what I wanted, and what family precedence had to say about it,” Draco admitted. “I don’t  _think_ that most of my ancestors have spent any time in Azkaban. We used to be better about avoiding prison than that.”  
  
Harry smiled without humor. “So he might feel that he was entitled to lead the family again if he got out, and you might feel that he had had a break in continuity and you were Lord Malfoy now.”  
  
“Exactly,” Draco said. “And I don’t want to oppose him, and I can’t even say for sure that he would be wrong. But I don’t want to give this up.”  
  
Harry’s hand tightened on his. “I don’t think you would be wrong,” he said, rolling over and studying Draco’s face. “I mean, I know he’s your dad, but you’re the right head for the Malfoy family right now, and maybe forever.”  
  
Draco swallowed. He had once overheard a conversation between his parents, where his father had been talking about a tough decision he would make, although Draco didn’t know what that decision would have been. His mother had touched his father’s hand and looked at him with much the same expression Harry was using on him now.  
  
 _It’s nice to have a husband who will support me._  
  
And he might not have got that even if he’d married a pure-blood, given that many of them would have their own ambitions and want to live their own lives, regardless of whether it was what Draco wanted.  
  
“Thank you,” Draco said, when he had cleared his dry throat. “But what are you going to do next? Speak to my mother?”  
  
Harry smiled, the shadow back in his eyes again. “I’m not brave enough for that now, Gryffindor or not. No, I’m going to rest for the night. And so are you. In the morning, we’ll decide how we should question Shepherd and what we should do about the wizards who came with him. Then I’ll go to the Ministry. I’m tired of this feeling that we’re running from crisis to crisis. I want to control what happens, and that means we’re going to come up with a  _plan_ for confronting our enemies.”  
  
Draco laughed in delight and leaned over to kiss him. “The great Harry Potter, planning? His enemies would quake in fear.”  
  
“I’m not so sure that they shouldn’t, when I have you at my side,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I wonder how much I could have accomplished if I’d sat down and planned what I should do next when I was still an Auror, instead of dashing into dangerous situations.”  
  
Draco shook his head. He didn’t want Harry thinking about and resenting his lost Auror career, for a number of reasons. “I don’t think it matters. But you’re right that we need a plan, and a night to sleep on it and a day to think it over would help.” He stood up, stretching his arms and yawning, aware that Harry was watching the way his chest flexed from the corner of his eye. “So. Do you have any ideas yet on how we should make that plan?”  
  
“Not yet,” Harry said. “I want a meal and a shower and a nap first.”  
  
“I’ll send Ossy to you with some food, then.” Draco put a hand gently on Harry’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the decision you made. Yes, my feelings on having my father free are mixed.” He thought about the way Narcissa had looked when she was speaking to Harry, and shivered a little. “But I’m here to support you as much as you are to support me.”  
  
Harry looked up at him, and his eyes were so bright that Draco wanted to preen a little, and even more wanted to shout out to anyone who would listen about how “the great Harry Potter” had become his. But Harry brushed a hand against his side instead, a more intimate gesture than taking Draco’s hand in some ways, and nodded.  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “It might be—maybe I can work out some other answer to your mother’s demand. But not right now.”  
  
Draco kissed him one more time, and left. He had things he could work on: making a list of potential enemies who might have stabbed him at the party, and struggling with the basilisk wand to make sure it would cooperate in all situations, and devising the questions that they might use to get the most truth out of Aurelius.  
  
And when he got bored or needed a holiday from his work, he would let his mind linger on the image of Harry as a reward.  
  
*  
  
 _I have a husband for real._  
  
Harry sat in front of his fire, eating the meal Ossy had brought him. It was heavy on meat and fruits and vegetables, and low on sweets until Harry had finished eating the rest and stopped giving Ossy appealing looks. Then Ossy staggered in carrying a plate with one of the biggest cherry pies Harry had ever seen. He ate it, and watched the flames, and listened to the scrapes of his fork against the plate and his own thoughts.  
  
He had a husband. He had a family.  
  
He knew that he could have had that in other places, from other people. Perhaps even a happier one, if he had waited and then married someone purely of his choice, instead of undertaking a demi-marriage because Draco had demanded it of him.  
  
But this was what he had, and he was more than satisfied with it. He was free of the Ministry, which might not have happened if he had married Ginny or anyone else. He was happy. He had someone to fight for.  
  
He understood the sense of family duty, and pride in family that Draco and other Slytherins had talked about during school, for the first time. His hands were steady, and he could look at the future with a wide, bright eye.  
  
He had made sacrifices, but he deserved some peace and some freedom, too. And he would have that, once some of their immediate problems were settled, and he could relax behind the Malfoy wards.  
  
So he ate, and leaned back on his bed, and read a book that Ossy brought him—a wizarding novel with no connection to the pure-blood customs Draco had been having him learn—and felt as if his bones were going to turn to butter and melt into the bed.  
  
Yes, he deserved evenings like this sometimes.


	35. Running in the Light

“She didn’t have  _any_ right to ask that of you.”  
  
Harry blinked and looked with a faint sense of bemusement at George’s bowed head. George’s hands were working on the Wheeze in front of him, which sometimes resembled a bugle and sometimes was a packet of black powder; Harry had no idea what it would become when it was finished. George didn’t look up. He hadn’t turned red in the face or pounded his fist on the table the way Ron had when Harry told him what Narcissa wanted. He simply worked, but his words were still enough to make Harry wince.  
  
“She had the right of a woman who’d been hurt by her son-in-law,” Harry said. “Who didn’t even get a say in her son-in-law, because she was still in a coma when Draco married me.”  
  
George leaned back on the table, and then winced. He limped towards the wall, where Harry had helped him build a bar that he could hold onto when he got faint like this. He sat down on the chair after a minute or so of standing with the help of the bar, and shook his head at Harry. “When will you realize that  _no one_ has the right to mistreat you? I thought your husband might have taught you that, at least.”  
  
“That’s not mistreatment,” Harry said. “She just asked me something.”  
  
“The way the Ministry used to.”  
  
Harry blinked. He hadn’t made that connection. “Narcissa isn’t asking me to risk my life—” But then he paused and thought about the way she might have expected him to break into Azkaban and bring Lucius out, or the consequences if he did. Yes, all right, he could see a _little_ bit of what George was talking about.  
  
“Yes, she is,” George said, quietly but forcefully. “And you have every right to tell her to go fuck herself.” He paused, still staring at Harry. “What did you say that you would do instead? Because you aren’t going to free the bastard, I can already tell that.”  
  
Harry shook his head with a faint smile. Ron hadn’t thought what he had chosen a good compromise, which increased the chances that George might not, either, but it was still what Harry had decided on, and no one was going to sway him from it. “To check on his condition and make sure he was being treated well.”  
  
“You shouldn’t even have to do that much.”  
  
Harry scratched the back of his neck. Draco had said something similar to him at dinner the other night—although he thought both Draco and George would probably be horrified to be compared to each other. But he wondered how he could explain it now, when he hadn’t found the right words for Draco.  
  
“It’s not that I want to do it,” he said at last. “Even that I really feel I  _have_ to do it, and dragged down by chains. Draco said the same thing about my Ministry duties. He thinks I should be free to do whatever I want. I just—I was never able to be that way when I was a child, and I’m not that way now. I  _want_ to work within limits. I feel a lot less constrained than Draco thinks I do, or then you do.” He looked at George. “Can you understand that?”  
  
George blinked once, twice. Already his face was regaining color and he looked like he was getting some of his strength back. “Not well,” he admitted finally. “It sounds like you think you need the limits or something bad will happen.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Dumbledore was worried that I would get spoiled if he had someone in the wizarding world raise me. And maybe he could have found someone who wouldn’t, but it would still have been a possibility. I could have lots of fame and power if I wanted it. I could have it even now, if I renounced the Malfoy name. But I don’t want it.”  
  
“And you want the limits.” George said that slowly, as though the words were in a language he’d just learned.  
  
Harry nodded. “Because  _normal_ people have limits. And to be normal is all I ever really wanted.”  
  
George smiled, with an edge of bitterness to it that left Harry in no doubt of who he was thinking about. “The one thing you won’t ever be. Especially now that you have the Malfoy name attached to you and a bloody  _dragon_ on your forehead.”  
  
Harry shrugged again. “Magic isn’t normal, according to the people I grew up with. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It means that I have to readjust my thinking. And I think I can still be normal as a Malfoy. But not if I do whatever the fuck I want, and tell my mother-in-law to fuck off.”  
  
“Because it wouldn’t make for a normal life afterwards,” George said, and snapped his fingers. “Because you want to live in the Manor with her and—Malfoy, and you can’t do that if she’s angry at you all the time.”  
  
Harry nodded. “The one thing the Dementor ghosts  _should_ have taught me is to think about consequences. No matter how good it may feel at the time to just yell and scream and complain and break the rules, you still have to live with it when you’re done. That’s why I didn’t tell the Ministry off a lot earlier.”  
  
George looked at him with a different expression on his face now, although Harry didn’t understand it until he said, “And Malfoy treats you right? Really? Doesn’t make fun of you for your blood, doesn’t object to you seeing your friends?”  
  
Harry snorted. “I know he would still prefer it if I was pure-blood and came without any Weasleys attached. But then, I would prefer if it he hadn’t been on the opposite side of the war and didn’t have a Dark Mark on his arm. We can’t always get what we want.”  
  
“Which doesn’t answer my question.”  
  
Harry crossed the room specifically to cuff George on the side of the head, since he probably wouldn’t shut up about it otherwise. “It’s  _fine,_ George. I promise. No, it’s not ideal. There are a lot of things about the situation that aren’t fucking ideal! But we’re learning to be around each other.” He thought of telling George he was in love with Draco, but didn’t. It didn’t seem right, not now.  
  
George raised his hands defensively in front of him. “All right, mate, I believe you.” He eyed Harry until Harry shifted and stared pointedly at him, and then nodded. “But you would let me know if there was anything I could do for you?”  
  
“The next time I need Narcissa Malfoy pranked into good behavior,” Harry said solemnly, “I’ll call on you.”  
  
George smiled, and they were able to talk about other things for the rest of his visit, which Harry appreciated. He had come here, just as he’d gone to Ron and Hermione, partially to warn them about what he was going to do in case it had consequences for them, but normal people talked about things other than themselves, too.  
  
*  
  
“Mistress Narcissa is wanting Master Draco in her rooms.”  
  
Affy was the one who gave Draco the message, the less bold of the house-elves, bowing his head and avoiding eye contact. Draco put down the vial he’d been using to brew the Veritaserum, and thought about it for a minute. Then he nodded. “I’ll come.”  
  
Affy gave a weak-sounding whimper that might have been of relief, and vanished, presumably to carry the message back to Narcissa. Draco spent some time adjusting the hang of his shirt cuffs, and also simply delaying. His mother would lose some respect for him if he scuttled into her room the moment he was summoned.  
  
And Draco needed to send her a number of messages.  
  
When he finally knocked at her door, she called for him to enter in a strong voice. Draco opened the door to see her sitting up without the support of a pillow, carefully sipping soup from a mug. Healer Bowman had been cautiously optimistic about reversing the magical aging now that she’d woken up, but still warned her not to eat hard things or even much solid food, so as not to stress her teeth.  
  
Narcissa looked up at him, and smiled briefly. Draco bowed back. He could still respect her even when their gazes crossed like swords, the way they did now.  
  
“You did come,” Narcissa said, setting aside the mug. “I wondered if you would, or if your husband would keep you busy.”  
  
“Harry is out of the house this morning,” Draco said, and took the chair next to her bed. “How are you?” he added.  
  
His mother watched him a moment more, as though testing the sincerity of the question, and then nodded. Draco must have passed  _some_ sort of test, then, he thought. “I’m much better,” she said. “The Healer thinks the magical effects of this aging might yet pass off. My spirit can fight it, and my magical core, now that I’m awake.”  
  
Draco smiled, and felt one line of tension across his shoulders slide away. That only left sixteen or so, he thought wryly. “That’s wonderful news.”  
  
Narcissa nodded. Draco knew she was gathering herself for an effort. He waited, keeping his hand from playing with the cover on the arm of the chair, as it wanted to do.  
  
“Why him?” Narcissa asked quietly. “I know that you wanted to make him pay for the debt, but there are other payments you could have claimed. A large payment of Galleons would have hired experts to repair the wards, bought me Healers, and let you get a new wand. Why did you choose a  _demi-_ marriage?”  
  
“Our family had lost magical strength,” Draco said. “Because my wand was broken and the wards, and because you had lost so much of your life. That was what I wanted, more than the money. To be strong.”  
  
“Enough money, and we would have gained strength,” his mother said steadily. “Because we would have taken  _his_ , we would have drained his vaults. Or he could have helped you repair the wards, but stopped after that.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “You know as well as I that the wards are powerful because they’re blood wards,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Either someone needs to make them who’s part of the family, or they need to be sealed to the family. The demi-marriage was the way to do that.”  
  
“You could have chosen something else,” Narcissa said, in the peaceful tones of someone who knew she was right and would continue to think that way. “ _Someone_ else. You didn’t need to marry him.” She paused, giving Draco a chance to refute her, but Draco only waited. There was something else to come, something that was worse than what she had said so far. That was the way she argued. “You didn’t need to fall in love with him.”  
  
 _I should have known better than to think I could hide that,_ Draco said, and met her eyes, and waited, and said nothing.  
  
His mother gave a quick breath of pain, and Draco realized she hadn’t known until then that he really was in love with Harry.  
  
“You need a witch,” Narcissa whispered. “Someone who can love you, or where it doesn’t matter if she does or not, but someone who can bear you  _children_. Your line won’t continue like this.”  
  
“It wouldn’t have continued at all if I hadn’t married Harry,” Draco countered. “The way I was immediately attacked when the wards fell proved that.”  
  
His mother only shook her head, and looked, absurdly, for a moment as if she would clasp her hands over her ears. “You could have chosen something else,” she whispered. “I want to know why you chose this. You certainly didn’t fall in love with him the day you married him, or at Hogwarts.”  
  
Draco should have remembered how quick and keen his mother was to sense the truth in affairs like this, really, but he hadn’t wanted to, and he hadn’t suspected she knew until she said it. Now he paused, and a faint smile touched his lips. His mother could take that in many ways; he wondered how she would  _choose_ to take it.   
  
“What told you that I was in love with him?” he asked. Useless to deny it when they both knew she was right.  
  
His mother shut her eyes and took a deep breath, as if she would have been happy to have him deny it, after all. “You are taking more dangerous risks than you would take for someone who meant nothing to you,” she said.  
  
“There is a difference between meaning something and being beloved.”  
  
“True,” his mother whispered, focused entirely now on her clasped hands. Draco looked at the age spots on them and looked away again. “Oh, very true. And what told me was the fact that you followed him when he left me, and you haven’t told me what he intends to do yet. When your first loyalty was to me, as the only other part of the Malfoy family free, you would have told me at once.”  
  
“There’s no reason for you to oppose each other,” Draco said, choosing the tactic that made the most sense to him. “We’re all Malfoys together. I could have chosen considerably worse, and you know it.”  
  
“He will not do what I want, will he?”  
  
Draco sat up on the edge of his chair, because his mother’s voice had gone not only cold but soft, and he knew he had to walk carefully. “He has a plan,” he said, and slipped a coldness of his own into his voice. “He doesn’t want to hurt you. He doesn’t regard you with the same level of hostility that you use on him.”  
  
“He is not the one who had his life  _stolen_ from him.”  
  
Draco winced and leaned back. “True enough,” he said, when he could speak. “I think he would be the first one to acknowledge that.”  
  
“But he doesn’t love you enough to back off and let you go free, to marry someone who would be of more use to you,” Narcissa said, turning and staring at him.   
  
“More useful in  _what_ way?” Draco had to ask, because he really had no idea where his mother was going with this. “Someone who could give us as much money and power? No, we couldn’t find someone who’s Harry’s match. And if I divorce him before the five-year term of the demi-marriage is over, then his money doesn’t have to stay in the vaults and he doesn’t have to keep the Malfoy name. The sacrifices I  _did_ make will lose their value. No, Mother. I’m sorry that this happened, and that I couldn’t consult you about who I should marry. Maybe you would have chosen me someone even better.”  _Unlikely,_ said the back of his mind, but since that part of him wouldn’t have existed if he hadn’t married Harry, Draco saw no need to pay attention to it. “But what’s done is done.”  
  
“You say that as if Malfoys haven’t always manipulated consequences and secured their futures in a different direction when it suited them,” his mother snapped.  
  
“Then you should expect the same traits to show up in Harry,” Draco said, meeting her eyes. “And what have you sensed about him?”  
  
Narcissa leaned back on the pillows. Draco didn’t think it was because the conversation had exhausted her. “That he is in love with you, too?”  
  
But she made it a question, and Draco smiled without humor. “Of course he is. You should have remembered what kind of person he is. He couldn’t sense that someone loved him without at least wanting to return it, and we’ve protected each other and fought beside each other and showed that we didn’t despise each other for what the battles did to us. Or made us do,” he added, thinking of the way Harry had questioned Robbs. “And we slept in the same bed.”  
  
Narcissa took a few deep, rattling breaths. When she began to cough, Affy appeared beside the bed and looked anxiously at Draco.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, nodding to the house-elf and standing up. “I think this conversation has rather tired my mother.”   
  
Narcissa’s arm moved in a vicious gesture. Draco bowed and moved away without kissing her. With the way she felt at the moment, it would have been grotesque.  
  
But not with the way he felt, and Draco paused, facing the door, to try to make her understand one more time.  
  
“The demi-marriage made Harry a Malfoy,” he told the door quietly. His mother’s coughing had stopped, but he could hear Affy fussing and humming under his breath, and he knew she wouldn’t be perfectly back to normal yet. “He’s proven himself in his loyalty to us, and the way he tries to make sure that we’re both pleased. I wish you could see that he could give more to us than just any pure-blooded witch could.”  
  
“You sound as though your heart has been given.”  
  
 _And not to me._ Draco could translate the unspoken sentence as well as anyone else.  
  
He only shook his head, though, and moved on without looking back. He could try to explain to his mother that his own heart was pulled in two, that he wanted to do whatever he could to make his mother comfortable—except if the “whatever” included sacrificing or betraying Harry.  
  
 _I should be more loyal to her. I’m related to her by blood, and I’ve known her longer._  
  
But it wasn’t that simple anymore, and Draco wondered if that was another reason he feared having his father free so much. His father wouldn’t see it as complicated, he would go straight ahead with the “simple” interpretation, and that would be the end of anything permanent Draco might have with Harry.  
  
 _If Harry could come up with some way to free him and not have him immediately take over the family again…_  
  
 _But not even Harry can work miracles._  
  
*  
  
Harry had considered what he should do about the Ministry and Lucius Malfoy and Azkaban, and in the end, he had decided that he had nothing to gain by lying. He was too recognizable anyway, changed scar or not, and there was too much of a chance that something would go wrong if he tried subtlety. Draco had told him he was better at subtlety than he thought he was, but Harry didn’t want to risk it.  
  
So he entered the Ministry through a Floo from George’s joke shop and walked calmly into the Atrium, heading for the lifts as though he was still an Auror.  
  
He heard footsteps stop behind him, and the sudden silence where people had been talking, but no one called his name. That didn’t really surprise him. After the way he had left, fear would be even stronger than curiosity.  
  
The lift arrived almost as soon as he called for it, and Harry settled into it, humming a little. No one raced to join him in it, although he’d seen a few Aurors and other Ministry officials waiting to go up.  
  
When he got to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, he stepped out and walked through the familiar corridors. He kept his eyes aimed straight ahead. Once again people fell silent when they saw him, but this time, it made his skin itch and his head want to turn, because someone was probably aiming a wand at his back.  
  
These were people he had worked with. Raids, and the bigger cases that involved Dark magic and murder, always required more Aurors than just a partner team. Harry had defended some of the Aurors watching him, and he owed his life to others. He’d ducked curses and set up ambushes with them, written reports and tried to get people to calm down and stop shouting when one of the ambushes went wrong.  
  
He’d seen some of their partners die.  
  
 _This is what I should be doing. I should be here, protecting them and helping them and making sure that I can protect and help other people—_  
  
But. Harry shook his head. In the end, Aurors like Eliot had cared more about Harry’s reputation as a rising Dark Lord than about the ways he could help them.  
  
No one stopped him all the way to the Head’s office, but when Harry looked over his shoulder as he knocked on the door, they were standing there, in a quiet, breathing crowd. Harry turned and faced them fully. They swayed back from him a little, but didn’t clear the corridor. Well, most Aurors were made of harder material than the average visitors to the Ministry that Harry had mostly passed in the Atrium.  
  
Harry cocked his head and waited for someone to say something. But they didn’t, at least not before the Head’s door opened.  
  
“Come in, Harry.”  
  
Gustavus Halloway, the Head of the Department, spoke in a gentle voice that made Harry smile. He knew the dangers of that voice, but so did everyone else in the corridor. By the time Harry turned around and entered the office, most of his audience had melted away, and the rest did it before Halloway could see them.  
  
Halloway sat behind his desk, watching Harry as he approached him. Unlike most of the other Aurors, he didn’t have lot of a photographs clustered around his office—no grinning and waving family members, no people he had saved, or not saved, on cases, or put in Azkaban. He had bookshelves instead. Harry caught sight of a treatise on rare poisons standing out from among the rest, and wondered what Halloway was researching. He still did an awful lot of field work that other Aurors brought him when they confronted a really strange case. Halloway’s specialty was esoteric magic.  
  
Halloway himself had grey hair, a grey beard, and tended to wear grey robes. The cane he had leaning next to the desk was green, too, but he didn’t try to pick it up as Harry approached. Harry saluted him and stood there, waiting. There was a good chance that Halloway already guessed what he had come for, because there was a reason certain wizards and not others became the Heads of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.  
  
“You want to free Lucius Malfoy.”  
  
 _Well, so even Halloway can be wrong._ Harry raised his eyebrows a little and corrected him, “I want to  _visit_ Lucius Malfoy. To find out if he’s being well-treated. You know how bad the prejudice against former Death Eaters can be.”  
  
Halloway nodded a little. “Against former Death Eaters, and their families.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “That, too.”  
  
Halloway considered him in silence. Harry waited. He had seen no reason not to try the direct route, but if this didn’t work, he would try something else.  
  
Then Halloway sighed, reached out and grasped the cane, and climbed to his feet. His left leg was shorter than the right, and twisted backwards as a result of the curse that had taken him out of the field. “All right,” he said, standing and looking at Harry for an even moment before he made for the door. “But I’m coming with you.”  
  
“I can’t ask for anything better.”  
  
“In my day, young Aurors didn’t say things like that to their Heads,” Halloway muttered.  
  
“Well, technically, sir, I’m not an Auror anymore.”  
  
“You could still teach some of them how to salute,” Halloway snapped, and he was out in the corridor, leading the way, before Harry could respond. Harry followed, smiling, and this time, he found it easier to ignore the watchers.


	36. In the Dazzle

“Department Head Halloway and Mr—Malfoy to see Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Harry smiled at the door in front of him, which meant that he wasn’t smiling at the Auror who had stumbled over his name. It did sound strange when someone said it like that, but he would get used to it over time, he thought, as he heard it repeated. And so would other people, no matter how much they hated it.  
  
The Aurors kept glancing at them as they led Harry through the dim, downwards corridors to the cells. Harry kept a bland expression on his face most of the time, but when he caught someone’s open stare and couldn’t ignore it, he raised his eyebrows and stared back. The Auror immediately turned away again, muttering something Harry couldn’t catch.  
  
“Few Aurors have the poise that you did,” Halloway said over his shoulder. He didn’t seem to have trouble with the Azkaban corridors despite his leg and the cane, Harry thought. Ease of use, probably. He would have walked them many times before. “I think it’s to their detriment rather than their credit.”  
  
“I had less poise than I wished for,” Harry muttered. “There were the times that  _Prophet_ reporters surprised me, and the times that a fellow Auror said the wrong thing and ended up with my wand at his throat, and those times that someone spoke up and said that Voldemort’s death was the worst thing that ever happened to the wizarding world…”  
  
“It  _did_  take us a long time to convince her to come out of that cupboard, you know.”  
  
“Sorry,” Harry said, not feeling it. He had already been having a bad day before he’d heard Andrea Channing say that, since Ron had almost died from blood loss and was still in St. Mungo’s, and he had no patience for that particular Auror’s pure-blood sympathies and little simpering insistences that there was just something “fundamentally  _different_ ” about pure-bloods and Muggleborns.  
  
“You might feel differently now, do you think?”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows all on his own this time, wondering if they were about to enter on the interrogation he’d been a little surprised not to get the first moment he stepped into Halloway’s office. “Not really,” he said. “There’s a difference between being a member of a pure-blood family and thinking that Voldemort’s determination to slaughter whoever he wanted was praiseworthy. Channing probably thought she would never be in the category of his victims, and so she can admire him or whatever. People who think like that are always surprised when the consequences  _do_ catch up with them.”  
  
“You were the consequences that day, then?”  
  
“Better than some she might have faced out in the field if she’d refused to arrest a Death Eater because he was continuing Voldemort’s ‘noble work’ or something,” Harry said shortly. “Is there anything  _else_ you want to know about my current beliefs, sir?”  
  
“No, that’s enough,” Halloway said, and Harry thought he saw a faint smile on the man’s face as they went through the final door and entered the level where the most dangerous, and sometimes the most political, prisoners were kept.  
  
The ceiling was low here, even in the corridor. That hadn’t been a problem when Dementors guarded Azkaban; they could change the size of their bodies and patrol one by one or in groups. Now that the Ministry had finally confirmed Dementors were not coming back, some of the guards had talked about raising the roof, but no one knew what they would do with the prisoners in the meantime.  
  
Lucius Malfoy was in the first cell to the left of the door. Harry turned to face him, shaking his hair so that his fringe fell away from the dragon-shaped scar on his forehead.  
  
Lucius stared at him. The cell he sat in was more luxurious than Harry had thought it would be, something like a stone drawing room, but he still only had one chair, one table, a crooked shelf, a small bed, and a chamberpot. Harry searched his face quietly. It didn’t look as though Lucius was being beaten or starved. Still, there were other methods of mistreating someone, as Harry had reason to know from his time at Privet Drive.  
  
“Harry Potter?” Lucius whispered. “Am I dreaming?” He wore pale grey robes, the usual clothes of an Azkaban prisoner. They would turn black and cling like tar if the prisoners managed to escape. As Harry watched, he clutched them around him and gave a convulsive shiver.  
  
“I don’t know what I would be doing in your dreams, sir,” Harry said. He had considered and rejected the idea of calling Lucius Father-in-law, and his first name seemed too dismissive. The absolutely grey and neutral manner he used with Halloway would do instead, he thought. “I came to make sure you’re being well-treated.”  
  
“Is this a political decision?” Lucius narrowed his eyes at him. “Why would you care that I’m well? Has the Ministry  _assigned_ you to care?”  
  
“No.” Lucius didn’t seem to have noticed the changed scar on his forehead, so Harry swatted at his fringe again. “I’m part of the Malfoy family now. I entered a demi-marriage with Draco about a month ago.”  
  
Lucius went so still that Harry would have thought one of the Aurors behind him had cast the Stone-to-Flesh spell, but he knew better. He held Lucius’s eyes, and waited.  
  
“You cannot have done that,” Lucius whispered. “You have no reason to do it for our benefit, and Draco would not have asked it.”  
  
“When I defeated the Dementor ghosts,” Harry said, emotionless because it seemed best, “I drew on the life-debts that connected me to your family, because Ron and Hermione and I didn’t have enough power on our own. I didn’t mean to, but I still shattered Draco’s wand and the wards and took enough life-force from Narcissa to age her. Draco demanded that I marry him to repay the debt.”  
  
Lucius did nothing but stare at him. Harry wondered if he needed time to absorb the enormity of the change, or whether he hated Harry for doing this the way Narcissa did, or whether it was something else. He couldn’t find out by interrupting his thoughts, though, so he stood and waited.  
  
Finally, Lucius hissed, “What odd fates condemned me to have Harry Potter for a son-in-law?”  
  
Harry shook his head gently. “I don’t know,” he said. “But Draco and I have managed to come to a sort of understanding, and the wards are back up now, and he has a new wand. And your wife is awake from the magical coma I cast her into.”  
  
“You’re here at her instigation, of course,” Lucius said briskly. “You never would have thought me worth investigating on your own.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “She asked me to come. But I would have done the same thing for Draco, if he wanted it.”  
  
“There is a  _warmth_ in your voice when you say my son’s name, Mr. Potter, that is most disturbing.” Lucius pulled his robes tighter around himself.  
  
“Mr. Malfoy,” Harry corrected him. “Since I took your name as my own when I married Draco. But yes, I would say that we’re in love. Stronger than mere allies, and not just friends. And you’re important to me because you’re important to him.”  
  
Lucius shut his eyes. “My son was supposed to marry Astoria Greengrass at one point,” he whispered. “I discussed it with her parents, and she was infatuated with Draco. My initial arrest after the war put paid to that notion, but perhaps it would have happened as they listened to their daughter instead of the press. You’ve  _ended_ that, do you understand? You’ve ended Draco’s chance to have children.”  
  
“He can still have them,” Harry said. He kept his breath steady and even. This was about Lucius’s pain, not his. “We just haven’t talked about it yet. Or we can get divorced and then both of our families will have the name Malfoy when we get married to someone else.”  
  
Lucius opened his eyes. He looked the way Harry remembered Narcissa looking when she had demanded her husband’s freedom. “Do you have any idea of the complexities here, the ways that this upsets the future I had dreamed of for my son?” he said.  
  
“I think your own imprisonment and the way he had to serve You-Know-Who disrupted his life enough already,” Harry said dryly. He would have used Voldemort’s name in front of Lucius the way he had with Halloway, but upsetting Lucius wasn’t part of the plan.  
  
Lucius sighed. “That’s true, but this—you could have refused.”  
  
“Not if I wanted to pay the debt.” Harry leaned back against the wall. He supposed part of his duties as a Malfoy son-in-law consisted of finding ways to ease his father-in-law past the shock. “Draco was the one who told me that marriage was the only way, because only marriage would help the family recover its strength sufficiently.”  
  
Lucius stared at him, and shook his head. “You  _should_ have refused.”  
  
“I didn’t, and we’re married, and getting divorced now would disrupt everything we worked for,” Harry said, and smiled at him. “So. Are you being treated well? Can I get you anything? Blankets, food? A pipe?” He had no idea if Lucius smoked, but he imagined that Dumbledore would have been grateful for something like that.  
  
Lucius’s gaze drifted to Halloway, and he snorted. “Do you think that I would be allowed to answer you honestly in front of people who would have taken part in the mistreatment of me?”  
  
“I still have some of my own power,” Harry said. “And if you tell me the truth now, then I’ll ensure that you don’t suffer for it in the future.”  
  
“ _That_ kind of power, you don’t have.” Lucius spoke it as fervently as if it were an article of faith.  
  
“Really? If I expose the abuses that are happening in Azkaban, and expose, no less, that my own father-in-law is one of the people suffering from the abuse, then Rita Skeeter will  _lap_ it up,” Harry said flatly. “She’s still after me to do another interview, even though I did one with her right after the wedding. So, yes. There are things I could do. You don’t have to tell me the truth if you hate me. But this might be your only chance to get the balance redressed if something is happening.”  
  
“The minute you leave…” Lucius said, and this time he looked at the Auror guards.  
  
“You have my word,” Halloway said, “as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, that nothing will happen to you merely for speaking of your experiences. If you fear that it will, I can give you further protection.”  
  
Lucius started. He had overlooked Halloway, then, or dismissed him because of his injury, Harry thought. That happened to a lot of people.   
  
“I want to go home,” was what Lucius said, sounding so much like some of the first-year Gryffindors Harry had comforted in the past that Harry blinked, hard.  
  
“That’s impossible right now,” Halloway said. “But you can tell us the truth and be relieved of that particular trouble for the remainder of your sentence, at least.”  
  
Lucius opened his mouth, then hesitated, and Harry thought he would stay silent after all, either through fear of the guards or because he didn’t want to call on Harry Potter for help. But then he turned to Harry and said, as fiercely as if they were alone together before a duel, “You swear that every word you say is true?”  
  
“I do,” Harry said, and this time tapped his scar so Lucius couldn’t miss it. “I have a dragon on my forehead because the magic of the demi-marriage changed it to reflect my husband’s name. I have loyalty to the Malfoys that you might not understand yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”  
  
Lucius nodded and shut his eyes, retreating into himself like someone getting ready to make a confession. Harry settled himself. This was one of the things he had learned to be good at as an Auror, listening to someone who would come out with the whole truth eventually, but needed patience and indulgence in the meantime.  
  
“I receive food,” Lucius whispered. “But not enough, and sometimes meat with maggots in it, and sometimes cereal with spit instead of milk.”  
  
“That’s not true,” an Auror at Halloway’s shoulder said, loudly and hastily. “We never mistreat—we would  _never_ do anything so disgusting to anyone—”  
  
He shut up, probably because Halloway had turned around and made it so. Harry didn’t see any reason to look away from Lucius, who had broken the first barrier and was now talking on, more freely.  
  
“They cast spells so that I need blankets, and then make me beg for them before they give them to me. They don’t speak to me for days at a time, then come in while I’m sleeping and wake me up, asking me why I’m not talking, do I think I’m too good for them or something? They tell me that they’re going to torture my son and my wife, because they had to know what I was doing, and they probably have filthy Dark Marks on their arms, too.”  
  
By now, most of the Aurors who filled the corridor were arguing, or at least muttering that Lucius was exaggerating or getting details wrong, that they didn’t hurt people like that. Harry cast a spell that silenced their moving mouths without turning away from Lucius. He would finish his tale, and Harry would hear it until the end.  
  
“They don’t give me news,” Lucius breathed. “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Sometimes they tell me the season, but I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe I would come out of the prison when my sentence is done and not be able to count my time by the sun anymore.” He turned to Harry. “You’re not lying? You really did marry Draco?”  
  
Harry nodded gently. His first thought on seeing Lucius was that the man had held up remarkably well for seven years in Azkaban, but he thought now that it was probably the Malfoy pride supporting him more than anything else. “Yes. And I’m going to protect him and all the family, including you. Go on. Are there particular names you can give us, for who treats you worse than anyone else?”  
  
Someone lunged from the corner of his eye. Harry knew it was a guard, and that he was aiming his wand at Lucius, and that probably he was going to shut him up.  
  
Or try.  
  
Harry cast a Tripping Jinx in the guard’s direction, a Disarming Spell, a Stunner, and a charm that would roll the guard up in a conjured blanket and deposit him in a corner, all without turning away from Lucius. Meanwhile, Lucius shivered and stared a little, especially when Harry nodded gently and repeated, “Go on.”  
  
“The names,” Lucius said, lost, drifting, for a moment before his pride snapped him together again. “Marcus Todworth. Gaius Linwood. Daniel—his name was Hexnot, I think.”  
  
Halloway caught Harry’s eye. Harry nodded. He knew the reason for the slight frown on the Head’s face. Todworth hadn’t worked for the Aurors in years; he’d been caught stealing artifacts and sacked. That probably had something to do with the way Lucius’s sense of time had gone wonky in prison.  
  
But the other two were current Aurors, and if they weren’t on guard duty here, Harry knew they had been in the past. He turned back to Lucius. “And is there anything else they did to you?”  
  
“Hexed me. Hit me, sometimes,” Lucius whispered. “But not often. They didn’t want to leave marks, and they didn’t know the curses that would let hurt me without doing that.”  
  
 _A good reason to leave that out of Auror training,_ Harry thought, and faced Halloway. “Well, sir? Can you promise me that those guards won’t come into contact with my father-in-law again, and that you’ll do an investigation into how many of the prisoners are suffering indignities like this?”  
  
“I can promise it,” Halloway said. His face was pale, but Harry thought that might have been as much from standing with the cane for a long time as from hearing what he’d heard. “We will begin an  _immediate_ investigation into the guards who have been here and the names that Mr. Malfoy gave us, as well as what they might have urged other guards on to do. You have my promise of that.” He nodded to Luicus, a somber, impressive nod.  
  
“Good,” Lucius said, and leaned back against the wall of the cell, his eyes closed as though the conversation had exhausted him. “Now I only need to worry about what will happen when you leave here.”  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes. He imagined what Draco would feel when he heard what Harry had to say. He imagined what Narcissa would say. He could see their faces, even paler than Halloway’s, their closed eyes and their turned heads.  
  
“That’s not going to happen,” he said, and reached out with his wand, tapping it against the bars of the cell before anyone could stop him. For once, he was glad of the official policy of not disarming anyone who visited with the Head, although it had irritated him a few times in the past. “ _Creo castellum!_ ”  
  
There was a low, ringing note, and Harry shuddered a little as it traveled through his body. Then a blue glow sprang up around the bars of Lucius’s cell, with only a slot at the bottom, like the one that the Dursleys used to leave at the bottom of Harry’s bedroom door so they could feed him through it. The blue glow turned downwards and solidified, and a thick sheet of magic hung there.  
  
Harry turned towards the guards staring at him. “There,” he said quietly. “Now you can feed him and give him water, and when he really needs it emptied, the chamberpot can be passed out, because the space will grow big enough for that. But none of you can  _touch_ him. And that slot won’t permit the passage of any magic, so you can forget about casting spells on his food. Or poisoning him, for that matter. It doesn’t let that happen, either.”  
  
The guards backed up in front of him, and said nothing. Of course, with his Silencing Charm on them, they probably couldn’t, Harry thought, annoyed with himself. He sighed and glanced at Halloway. “Can we get out of here, sir?”  
  
“Pot—Malfoy.”  
  
Harry thought it quite big of Lucius to correct himself like that when he still wasn’t sure Harry had been telling the truth, and turned around with a nod. “Yes, sir?”  
  
Lucius had come up to the blue covering over the bars, and felt them with one hand as though to make sure the magic really did exist to touch as well as sight. Then he regarded Harry. “Tell my son and wife that I am doing well. That I hope to be home in a few years, if the Wizengamot concedes that I have served enough time.” And he turned and went back to the small chair in the corner of the room.  
  
“I think we’ve seen enough here,” Halloway said, although Harry didn’t know whose benefit he had said it for, the Aurors’ or Harry’s or even Lucius’s. But Harry agreed, so he nodded, told Lucius farewell, and followed the Head back up the sloping corridor to the world where you could trust more of your own senses to be in accord with reality.  
  
*  
  
“He wasn’t being treated well.”  
  
Draco had glanced at Harry’s face and opened his mouth to call Ossy. As it turned out, he didn’t need to. Ossy was right there with a glass of strong Firewhisky and some kind of pasta dish Draco didn’t recognize. Ossy led the floating tray over to a chair in the sitting room and stared at it pointedly until Harry sat down, at which point Ossy had put the tray into his lap and the Firewhisky into his hand.  
  
“How many times had he had been—hurt?” Draco asked quietly, not sure that he could bring himself to say the word “raped.”  
  
Harry stared at him, and then reached out and took his hand. “It’s not as bad as you think, Draco,” he said. “Bad, but not that bad. He was hexed and hit, and they lied to him about how you and Narcissa were going to be arrested or tortured, and they spat in his food. But nothing worse than that. I really think he would have told me.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes, trembling. For some reason, that had been his greatest fear. Probably because his father had received threatening owls years ago telling him that he deserved to be raped for being a Death Eater during the first war. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I couldn’t have gone in and asked him those questions.” He hesitated, and glanced at Harry. “I’m surprised he was willing to talk to  _you_  about them.”  
  
“I tied up and Stunned an Auror who was going to hurt him, probably because he was going to give us names of specific people who had participated in making him beg and torturing him,” Harry said simply. “After that, I think he trusted me more.”  
  
Draco leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I thought—I wish there was some way that he could be completely safe. But you said the Head promised his protection, so at least people who respect him might hesitate.”  
  
“Didn’t I mention that?” Harry had his mouth full of pasta, but he hastily chewed and swallowed when Ossy, who was adding wood to the fire, turned on his heels and glared at him. “I set up a magical protection on his cell bars. They only have one space to give him food and water through, and if he really needs to empty it, then it’ll become big enough to pass a chamberpot through. But no magic. No poison. No one can reach him as long as he’s in the cell, and the ordinary guards don’t have keys.”  
  
Draco swallowed, feeling his heart jump. “Thank you,” he whispered again. “I had no idea you knew a spell like that.”  
  
“It’s a pretty common spell. I think it’s called the Blue Asylum.” Harry was picking a bit of pasta out of his teeth.  
  
“I know what the Blue Asylum does,” Draco said, “and it’s not that. It couldn’t create something so safe, and that protected against magic and poison, too.”  
  
“Well, I made it do that.” Harry scowled at him and looked as if he would have folded his arms, except the tray was in the way, and he was too wise to upset Ossy by tipping it over or trying to move it. “It’s not a big deal. I just added power to it.”  
  
“How strong  _are_ you?” Draco said, narrowing his eyes. “You told me you weren’t very strong. I haven’t felt much magic from you at times. But if you can do something like that, and invest the spell with more power than it should have…” He jumped to his feet and held his hand out to Harry, Ossy be damned.  
  
“What do you want to do with me?” Harry looked at the hand like it was a snake he couldn’t speak Parseltongue to.  
  
“Take you to my private lab, where I was working with the basilisk wand, and test you,” Draco said shortly. “I think it’s time we know what kind of strength we’re really working with.”


	37. Basilisk Truths

“Again.”  
  
Harry was learning to hate that word. He thought about throwing up his hands and storming out of here. He hadn’t even finished his dinner, and he knew from experience that Ossy would get angry at  _him_ because of that, not Draco. He might as well go now. They weren’t going to learn anything from this that the first experiment hadn’t told them.  
  
But he had visited prison for Draco today, and compared to that, this was small stuff. Harry gritted his teeth and focused again on the target Draco had set up, which resembled a man in Auror robes. Of course it would, Harry thought. He was learning something about Draco’s temper and sense of humor now, and both of them would be involved in something like this.  
  
So he lifted his wand in front of him, waited until he thought his furiously beating heart and grinding teeth wouldn’t interfere with his casting, and spoke again. “ _Incendio._ ”  
  
The stream of fire shot away from his wand and hit the target straight on. Since it was only made of parchment stretched over wood, it caught fire at once and burned merrily. Harry had to step back from the heat. In a few seconds, it was ashes, and he turned to Draco, bouncing his wand on his hand and drumming his foot on the floor. “Well?”  
  
Draco stared at the pile of ashes and cast a few spells with his basilisk wand that made glowing green numbers appear in the air next to him. Harry couldn’t read them, but Draco had told him they measured the temperature of the ash and compared it to other things like dragonfire. That would tell Draco, in a roundabout fashion Harry didn’t entirely understand, how powerful his magic was.  
  
It took long moments, during which Harry’s bouncing and tapping both slowed down, but then Draco leaned back and gave him a slow, tragic shake of his head.  
  
“ _Damn_ it,” Harry said, and whirled away. He was going to walk out the door of Draco’s lab, he really was, and fuck what Draco said or if Ossy was waiting for him in the corridor.  
  
“No, Harry, listen to me,” Draco said, and Harry’s resolve or not, there was something compelling in his voice. At least Harry didn’t think Draco blamed him for not having powerful enough magic, the way his relatives had blamed him for having too much.  
  
 _No, he just wants someone more powerful, because that kind of person could guard the Malfoys better and also add more to their prestige._  
  
Harry did his best to stand still and not wince as Draco walked up and laid a hand on his arm, gesturing at the target. Harry looked dismissively at it again. “Maybe I’m just good with magic used against real people,” he suggested.  
  
“I thought of that,” Draco said. “And I thought that perhaps you were only good with defensive magic, like the kind that you need to produce the Blue Asylum. But you said that you rolled an Auror who was about to curse my father up in a carpet. And Disarmed him and Stunned him all in a few seconds.”  
  
Harry frowned. “Well, yeah. But that’s a spell I perfected for dealing with people who annoy me. I’ve cast it before.”  
  
Draco sighed, although Harry didn’t see why. So far, everything he had said seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and he had done what Draco asked of him, too. If Draco couldn’t think of a test that would reveal Harry’s “real” level of power, then, well, maybe it wasn’t meant to be found.  
  
“Listen,” Draco said at last. “The protection you cast for my father—do you know how strong that is?”  
  
Harry sighed. “Yes, because you’ve done nothing but talk about it since I came home. Look, I know it’s a powerful variation of a basic spell.”  
  
“It’s the  _finesse_  that gets me,” Draco muttered, letting go of Harry’s arm to pace back and forth with his head bowed.  
  
Harry glared at him. “Oh, thank you very much for  _that_ vote of confidence.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that, and you know I didn’t mean that.” Draco turned around and glared at him in turn.  
  
“No, I don’t,” Harry muttered, but he dropped his folded arms and shook his head. Of course Draco didn’t mean Harry was such a clumsy oaf it was unusual to see him do something skilled.  
  
But that left the question of what he meant and why it was so bloody important. “Maybe I can do it because I don’t care about the end result,” Harry offered. “So the things that look impressive to other people are really clumsy, and—I don’t know, not impressive. But if they analyzed them carefully enough, they would realize what they’re really like.”  
  
He shut his mouth, because Draco was giving him a long, slow look that resembled Ossy’s. Since there was no food in the room, though, it had to be about something else. So he awaited results, while Draco rubbed his forehead as though he was the one who had a curse scar there.  
  
“The problem with the Blue Asylum that you created for my father isn’t the degree of power, even,” Draco said, as if talking to himself. Harry relaxed a little. He liked it better when they could treat his magic like that, as if it didn’t belong to him. “It’s the  _number_ of changes that you made to it. How did you know that it would protect him against magic cast through the slot, or magic in his food, or poison? I’m not doubting you that it will,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth. “But it  _is_ unusual, you know. Why did you know the changes will hold?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I cast it all at once, and I didn’t think about the specifics of what I was doing. I told you, Draco, I don’t know how powerful I am. And why does it  _matter_?” he added, finally coming to the heart of the problem. “Why does it matter if I can raise stones a hundred feet in the air or two hundred? I’ve done well enough protecting your family and you so far.”  
  
“You’re good enough,” Draco said. “This isn’t about  _not being good enough_.”  
  
He said it in the tone that made Harry think he was going to seize Harry’s shoulders and shake him again. So Harry backed a step towards the lab door just in case, watching Draco all the while. “Right,” he said. “I don’t think we need to go into the childhood and self-esteem issues again. But why does it matter, Draco? Tell me why it matters to you, not to your family,” he added, because Draco had drawn a breath that seemed to predict a long speech.  
  
*  
  
Draco hadn’t thought he would have to explain  _that_. So he shook his head and stood there for a minute until the words that he wanted, or some of them, welled up in his head.  
  
“Because don’t you want to know?” he asked. “Exactly what you’re capable of, if our enemies bring something as powerful as another dragon against us again?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “We’ll find a way to survive it, and the battles we’ve lived through have been at least as much because of your talent and your new wand and your knowledge of the way our enemies are going to act. Why do we have to have something more than that?”  
  
“You have a lot of faith in the future,” Draco said. “Optimism at that level is  _blind,_ Harry. If I know how strong you are, then we can set up new wards that use that strength.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “And what if it turns out that I’m not very strong? Is that going to disappoint you?”  
  
“It’s the  _inconsistencies_  I want to figure out,” Draco began. “How can you feel so weak and then do something like create that protection for my father?”  
  
“Draco. Answer the question.”  
  
Draco focused on Harry’s face, and saw the way his face had turned pale, and smiled.  
  
“It won’t disappoint me,” he told Harry quietly. “I already thought that you might be weaker than I always assumed you were, and I could live with it. I just want to  _know_. All right? So that you can know, too, and we can plan for the future with knowledge as well as hope. Hope’s fine, it just needs to be backed up.”  
  
Harry went on studying him for a few seconds, and then relaxed and nodded. “Right,” he said. “Sorry to come across all strange, but it matters to me. I had—well, I’ve had lots of people who were disappointed in me for not waving my wand and fixing the wizarding world after the Battle of Hogwarts. As though  _anyone’s_ powerful enough to change some of those prejudices and attitudes that we’re buried in.”  
  
Draco didn’t say anything, carefully, about the Imperius Curse, or how powerful wizards could use their magic to bend minds and wills in weaker people. He just nodded and held out his hand. “I thought of something else you can do.”  
  
Harry smiled faintly and moved forwards until he was right next to Draco. “Like this?”  
  
“Yes.” Draco held up his wand towards Harry’s eyes, and although Harry narrowed them a little to focus on the tip, he didn’t move away. “Do you trust me enough to cast a spell that makes you tell the truth?”  
  
“You have Veritaserum for that.”  
  
Draco had to close his eyes. No, there was no question but that Harry trusted him, and that was just a bit overwhelming. “Not the same,” he explained calmly. “Veritaserum can only make you tell the truth about what you yourself know.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It couldn’t make you tell the truth about the reason your magic is so inconsistent,” Draco said, “because you don’t know it yourself. But this spell can pull out the real reason. It’s like Legilimency, but it only asks a question and finds the answer to it, not reads memories.”  
  
“Only,” Harry echoed dryly.  
  
“That’s all it does,” Draco said, and chose not to respond to the tone. “And this wand does what I want it to, which means it won’t hurt you. Please, Harry?”  
  
Harry sucked in a breath that went deep enough to be a “no,” but what came out was a, “Yes.”  
  
Draco let the wand tremble in his hand for just a second, and then straightened it, so that Harry would understand how much this meant to him. Then he nodded. “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, as he laid his wand along Harry’s eyelids, and Harry nodded and shut his eyes, standing still.  
  
Draco whispered the incantation, and for a moment, it looked as though the front of Harry’s forehead was swinging out like a door. Draco grimaced. He had always hated this part of the spell, illusory or not. He thought it was one reason no one used this more often.  
  
A cold wind traveled past him, and Draco heard his voice asking the question. He concentrated on it so it repeated in his mind.  _Why are you so powerful at some times and not at others?_ He had thought it best to ask that instead of how powerful Harry was, because the way he thought of power and the way Harry thought of it were different, and he might receive an answer that made no sense to him.  
  
There was a long, almost sullen silence, and Draco wondered if Harry  _would_ answer, whether or not he could. Then the response came back.  
  
 _I’m strong when other people need me to be. The rest of the time, I don’t need to be._  
  
Draco took a rapid step away, shaking, and Harry blinked and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “Did you get an answer?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows.  
  
Draco nodded, cursing himself in his head for a fool. Of course. Of  _course_. He should have thought of that before now. That was the connection he had missed between the offensive spell Harry had used on the Auror and the defensive one he’d used on the bars of Lucius’s cell. The way Harry saw it, they were both defensive. When he got angry and reacted without thinking, he could do anything he wanted. And he’d been able to draw on power against the Dementor ghosts because he was protecting the world.  
  
But he didn’t see it as worthwhile to be able to protect  _himself_ , or do daily charms more efficiently, or any of the other things that Draco had assumed powerful magic would help him with. He gave his heart to defending people.   
  
 _Of course he does. Bloody Gryffindor._  
  
Draco shook his head a little. “That you can use powerful magic when you’re defending others,” he said. “The rest of the time, you seem to think it’s not worth the effort.”  
  
Harry blinked at him for a short time, then nodded. “I probably could have told you that, actually,” he said. “Well, it’s not that I don’t think it’s worth the  _effort_ ,” he added, probably because he’d seen the way Draco’s eyes had narrowed. “Exactly. What I mean is—I always feel pushed to my limits when I protect someone else, and that doesn’t happen when I’m trying to, I don’t know, clean my desk or lift burdens heavier than my body.”  
  
“If you have the magic, then you should be able to access it all the time,” Draco said. “No matter what you feel, no matter if someone’s asking you for help right then or not.”  
  
“But  _why_?” Harry asked, and met his eyes squarely, with the kind of darkness in them that Draco hadn’t seen since the demi-marriage ritual. “Since we know this now, we don’t need to ask more questions. And you know I’ll always do what I can to defend our family.”  
  
Draco had to smile in spite of himself at hearing Harry talk about  _our_  family, but he shook his head. “You should have your magic because you deserve to do things for yourself, too,” he said. “And you’ve forgotten about the one member of the family you won’t be able to defend that way.”  
  
“I think I did a pretty good job with the Blue Asylum on your father’s cell, and in the meantime, I can try to work on ways of using my magic to drive back Narcissa’s age,” Harry began.  
  
“Yourself,” Draco said.  
  
Harry shut his mouth, then opened it again only to say, “What?”  
  
“I think you should be able to defend yourself, too,” Draco said. “What happens if you run into enemies—the one who stabbed me at the Ministry, perhaps—and you can’t call up the same kind of magic you used today to protect your own life? That strikes me as shitty for everyone involved.  _Including_ my parents. Including your friends who love you.”  
  
Harry was staring at him as if he’d never seen Draco before. Then he snickered a little.  
  
Draco didn’t appreciate that, but tried to show it only in a little narrowing of his eyes, rather than yelling. “Excuse me?”  
  
“I’m just trying to think what would happen if the boys we were at Hogwarts could somehow travel forwards in time and see this,” Harry said, shaking his head. “How the little you would  _squint_.”  
  
Draco did have to smile, but he said, “No running back in time as a way to escape dealing with this, Harry. Do you at least  _understand_  why it’s so important to me that you have all your magic available to you?”  
  
Harry was quiet, studying Draco’s wand as though he assumed that he would have to use it someday. Then he looked up and said, “No. Because there’s no such thing as  _full_ magic. When you’re tired and can’t cast powerful spells, does that mean that you’re somehow weaker or inferior to the way you act when you’re rested? When you don’t cast certain spells because it would be impolite, are you deprived of power that  _should_ be yours? And I refuse to let you call yourself weaker than me because you don’t have—I don’t know, this  _weird_ power that can manifest when someone really needs me to do it. I  _refuse_. You’re as good as me. Better, sometimes.”  
  
“It has nothing to do with moral worth,” Draco said, feeling the argument would go better if he could get Harry detached from that concept. “It has to do with strength, and the kinds of things pure-bloods respect.”  
  
“You haven’t had any of your friends over—unless you count Zabini—”  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
Harry nodded, but without losing track of his argument. “Since the night when they watched us dancing. Why is that?”  
  
“I wanted to give you a chance to get more comfortable with me, and then I forgot about the rest of it in the excitement. I’d still like to deal with the wizards in our dungeons and finding out who stabbed me before we try a party again,” Draco said briefly, and then stepped up in front of Harry. “You know that I would never do anything but honor you for your strength. I wouldn’t be afraid of it.”  
  
“But you would think of yourself as  _weaker_.” Harry glared at him. “I don’t want you to.”  
  
“Not worth less,” Draco said patiently. “Not as physically weaker, or not fit to be with you. Just not as strong magically. That’s all it means.”  
  
“Then why do you stare at me with this kind of awe whenever I talk about doing something strong?” Harry demanded.  
  
Draco hesitated, wishing for the first time that Harry was still studying those pure-blood books. They would make the value that people had placed on magical strength for centuries clearer than he could.  
  
But maybe it was simpler than that, or at least there was a simpler explanation that Harry could accept.  
  
“Because it’s beautiful,” Draco said. “And you’re beautiful when I see you in full flight with it.”  
  
Harry swallowed a little, and then said, “Well. The expression on your face when you said that was convincing, at least.”  
  
“I hope it’ll always be convincing.” Draco leaned forwards coaxingly. “And there’s another thing. Sometimes, protecting yourself with your full strength might make you better able to defend someone else further down the line. You might be able to come to my aid if you were protecting yourself from a trap that someone set. Don’t you  _see_ that I have legitimate reasons to want you to be able to use all your magic, all the time?”  
  
Harry hesitated a little more. Then he said, “All right, but since this was happening and I didn’t know why, how do you think I’m going to make it conscious? Most of the time, I don’t use the full strength of my magic because it really doesn’t feel like it’s there. I don’t know of any way to—I don’t know, bring it to the surface and make it available to me all the time. It sounds like that’s what you want to do, but you don’t know a way to accomplish it either.”  
  
Draco said, “I might.”  
  
“What?” Harry looked from his face to where his hand was resting on the basilisk wand, and narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure that thing obeys you all the time, Draco? And only does what you want it to?”  
  
“It has so far,” Draco said. His heart was pounding steadily enough that the wand shook a little when he raised it, but Harry had trusted Draco to go into his mind and pull the reason behind his lack of magic out. Surely he could trust Draco to bring his magic to the surface, too? “Will you let me see if there’s a—it seems silly to call it a spell when there’s no incantation involved, but will you let me see if there’s a  _way_ to get your magic up to the surface?”  
  
*  
  
Harry shut his eyes. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t want Draco think he distrusted him.  
  
But at the same time, he was wary of that basilisk wand and what it could do. And if its magic went deep enough, maybe Draco would actually  _give_ him power that Harry didn’t have. There was too much of Draco’s desires tangled up in there.  
  
 _Even if I still don’t completely understand why._ Draco might think Harry was beautiful in the midst of battle, and Harry could accept that, but how many times outside battle would he ever have occasion to use his “full” magic? Why was it such a wonderful thing to use it?   
  
Harry would rather work on breaking down the blocks that apparently existed in his own mind and eventually use his power whenever he wanted, for whatever he wanted, than have to deal with it all now.  
  
So he opened his eyes and shook his head. “So far, we’ve done well enough with my magic only defending other people,” he said, when Draco’s eyes turned stormy. “And now that I know you think it’s beautiful and you want me around, I’ll be more careful with my own life. And I probably won’t worry as often about frightening you, either.”  
  
“Good,” Draco said, the lines of his mouth still pulled tight. “Because I’m not frightened of you.”  
  
Harry reached out for his hand, and smiled at him. “But we have enough to deal with. The prisoners in the dungeons, for God’s sake, and your mother, and finding out once and for all who stabbed you. I don’t want to deal with new magic that might get out of control sometimes on top of that.”  
  
“Hard to concentrate on who stabbed me when they apparently haven’t done anything else,” Draco muttered, but nodded. “All right. Maybe later, when our lives aren’t as complicated, you’ll let me?”  
  
“Maybe,” Harry said. He tried to imagine a time when their lives would be less complicated, and had to shake his head a little. But there had to be at least a week when someone else wasn’t trying to kill them, right? And maybe an hour when Narcissa would have accepted him as her son-in-law.  
  
Narcissa was a problem that he didn’t feel prepared to deal with right now, though, and might not for a long time. He shoved the realization away and focused on the vial that stood on the top of a table near them. “You’ve already finished the Veritsaerum for Shepherd and the wizards he brought with him, haven’t you?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, but lingered before he picked it up, frowning at Harry.  
  
“It really is okay,” Harry said, trying to make his voice as gentle as he could. “I’m grateful to you for showing me why my magic fluctuates like that. I just don’t think of it as a problem right now—not as urgent as some of the other things we could be doing.”  
  
He leaned in to kiss Draco when Draco still lingered, and Draco melted against him, his hands clutching at Harry’s shoulders and his wand pressing hard against the side of his neck. That was Draco, Harry thought, easing back. He might need support, but he had dangerous power of his own.  
  
 _Maybe we should also concentrate on teaching him how to use_ his  _full magic._  
  
But right now, they had something else to do. Harry picked up the Veritaserum, and gestured for Draco to lead the way to the dungeons.


	38. Like a Dance

They stopped in front of the room that held Aurelius, and Draco paused to take a deep breath. Harry squeezed his shoulder and smiled at him, reaching out to take the Veritaserum. “You know that you don’t have to do this,” he whispered. “I can go in alone.”  
  
“And ruin our carefully orchestrated plan?” Draco raised his chin and moved forwards to open the door. “Of course not.”  
  
They came in together, walking side-by-side. Although they hadn’t planned  _this_ , Aurelius was asleep, and he only jerked awake as their footsteps sounded on the dungeon floor, cowering away from them to the limit his chains would allow. A second later, he bowed his head and turned his face away. Draco was glad that his cousin had  _some_ sense of shame at his cowardice.   
  
Harry crouched down in front of Aurelius. “We can do this one of two ways,” he said. “You can tell us the truth and everything that you did to try to kill Draco and me.” Draco didn’t roll his eyes, but he wanted to. He knew that Harry was still hoping the assassination attempt on him at the Ministry would prove to be related to Aurelius and his incompetent wizards, while Draco thought that unlikely.  
  
“What’s the other option?” Aurelius’s voice sounded papery when he whispered like that. Draco had to study the wall in front of him to conceal his contempt.  
  
“That we use the Veritaserum,” Harry said, and brought the vial into view.  
  
“I want to use the Veritaserum,” Draco said, folding his arms and sneering at Aurelius. They had decided to play it with Harry as the more sympathetic one, the one that Aurelius might feel he could gain some shelter and protection from. He had unnerved Aurelius with his “Auror mind-reading abilities” the other day, but it was no use pretending that Draco liked his cousin.  
  
“Of course you do,” Harry said, with a little nod over his shoulder and a roll of his eyes at Aurelius to try and suggest—or so Draco hoped—that Draco was just a little too abrupt for him. “But we have to give him the choice.”  
  
“It’s still not really a choice,” Aurelius said, looking back and forth between them, and shaking his head. “You think—you think I’m going to spill my secrets to you like  _that_ , without some form of compensation?”  
  
Draco tapped Harry on the shoulder. It was the only way he had at the moment of saying, “I told you so.” He had told Harry that Aurelius was too self-centered to take their offered solution of keeping his dignity. The minute someone was nice to him, he thought that meant he was a wonderful, significant person after all, and he would demand more than he was worth.  
  
Harry nodded, but said to Aurelius, “You’re going to tell us the truth. The only thing that you get to choose is whether you do it with some dignity intact, or not.”  
  
Aurelius gaped at him. Harry was softening his words with a smile, but there could be no doubt he meant what he was saying. And Draco had to give his cousin credit for at least minimal intelligence.  
  
“You said—you said it was a choice.” Aurelius wrapped his arms around himself, making the chains clank. “A real one.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “But not a choice between lying and telling the truth, or listening to us and treating us like peasants. You don’t have that much freedom. You were the one who tried to kill us, and destroy the Malfoy property, and hired people to kill me. After that, what made you think we were going to treat you like a king?” He sounded genuinely curious.  
  
Aurelius just gaped at him. Draco wished he could push at Harry’s shoulder and tell him to get over it, just let the question go. Aurelius had thought they would do that because he was stupid, and there was no real deeper reason.  
  
“Right,” Harry said, when some minutes had passed and Aurelius  _still_ gaped. “The Veritaserum it is.” Draco handed him the vial, and cast the spell that would shorten the chains and hold Aurelius in place so Harry could put the potion on his tongue.  
  
“But you said—you said I had a choice.” Aurelius was staring back and forth between them now, as though he assumed Draco would step up and take his part now that Harry had apparently changed his mind.  
  
“You did until you were so absurd about it and sat there keeping us waiting for an answer,” Harry said. “Besides, I don’t think we can trust someone like you to tell us the truth.” Draco nodded judiciously, and watched as Harry cast a spell that kept Aurelius’s head in place as he dripped the potion onto his tongue.  
  
Aurelius thrashed and wailed and tried to spit it back out, but Harry was an old hand at this, and Aurelius was more restrained right now than Robbs had been. In a few seconds, his head was drooping, and he had that idiot smile on his face that Veritaserum seemed to give some people.  
  
“Let’s start with simple questions,” Draco said, more than willing to ask the questions when it was of someone like this, someone whom he knew personally and who had tried to hurt him personally. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Aurelius Lucius Shepherd.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes, but nodded when Harry looked at him. Of course it was. Aurelius couldn’t claim the Malfoy fortune by last name, and not even by blood unless everyone in the direct line was dead, but it made sense that his parents would try to curry favor with Lucius by giving their son his name.  
  
“What do you stand poised to inherit if I die and my heir dies?” Draco continued, patiently. He wanted to make sure that the Veritaserum hadn’t taken knowledge of inheritances and family relations from Aurelius, as sometimes happened.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Draco paused. Aurelius had made the same flat statement that Veritaserum always produced, the same way he had said his name, staring straight ahead and with an expression on his face that made Draco start expecting his jaw to dangle any minute. But as far as Draco knew, there was no way the information he had just spoken could be correct.   
  
“You were my father’s legal heir if something happened to me,” he said. “You are the only relative close enough to inherit.” He paused, but Aurelius said nothing, and then Draco realized he hadn’t phrased it as a question. Rolling his eyes, he said, “Why do you stand to inherit nothing?”  
  
“Because you’ve changed things,” Aurelius said, still staring at the wall of the cell, although sweat was popping out on his forehead, and Draco was sure he would have been screaming if he could have. Of course, if he’d had the choice, he wouldn’t have been speaking of this at all.   
  
“Tell me how,” Draco said, when a few more seconds had passed and it seemed obvious that Aurelius would never talk on his own.  
  
“You have an heir,” Aurelius whispered. “I was only your father’s legal heir if something happened to you—and yours while you had none. Now that you have one, that changes things. Now priority would go to whoever your  _heir_ designates as his heir. He can choose anyone he wants, and I get nothing.” He shut his eyes, and tears ran thickly down his cheeks.  
  
Draco blinked for a bit, and then turned and nodded at Harry. “Assuming that his compatriots knew this,” he said, trying not to sound surprised, “that’s another reason for killing you. They wanted you out of the running, just in case they couldn’t get their hands on that artifact.”  
  
“Ask him about his magic,” Harry said, his eyes as distant as a lizard’s. “I want to know whether he really has lost some of it in payment for a debt, the way he implied when I questioned him.”  
  
Draco frowned. “Why are you looking like that? Surely knowing that someone wanted you dead because you could designate someone else as your heir doesn’t upset you that much.”  
  
“No one should take someone else’s magic,” Harry said, folding his arms in the way that Draco imagined he might on a witness stand. “It doesn’t  _matter_ what they did, that’s just wrong.”  
  
“Even when the person they took it from has tried to kill both of us?” Draco asked. He suspected he knew what the answer would be, but he wanted to hear the full, absurd truth from Harry’s lips.  
  
Harry glared at him. “There are some things that are wrong no matter what.”  
  
“I reckon illegal use of Veritaserum isn’t one of them,” Draco muttered, gesturing at Aurelius despite himself. “Or we couldn’t do  _this_.”  
  
Harry’s eyes flashed, once. Then he said, “There might be ways we can spare his life, doing this. But taking his magic in payment for a debt leaves him with nothing.”  
  
Draco sighed. More because it would make Harry happy than because he cared about Aurelius’s magic, he faced his cousin again and asked, “Is it true that someone started draining your magic in payment for a debt?”  
  
“It is.” A few more tears leaked down Aurelius’s cheeks. Harry winced, or so Draco noticed from the corner of his eye.  
  
Draco’s reserves of sympathy were exhausted for the moment, though, and he had more deserving targets for what was left. He shook his head and said, “Who did it? And why?”  
  
“The one who suggested it is named Brian Sontage,” Aurelius said, and it was eerie to hear him state what Draco was sure he would have liked to have shouted with hatred in that monotone. “The ones who helped him came with me. Geoffrey Chambers, Allen Richards, Nero Irons—”  
  
Draco cut off his recitation. A list of names without context meant little to him. “Tell me why they decided that only your magic would suffice for the payment.”  
  
“I owed them so much that there was no way I could pay it all back even if I inherited the Malfoy property. They decided an artifact could pay it off, and they would rather have that than money.” Aurelius’s hands tried to close into fists for a moment, and then fell helpless and useless back at his sides.  
  
Draco shook his head. “How did you come to owe them so much money?” Yes, his cousin was stupid and careless, but Draco had heard murmurings of Sontage’s name before. He was the sort of man you didn’t cross. Aurelius, he had always thought, would have been smart enough to stop when he began to owe him vast amounts. Draco had had  _that_ much respect for Aurelius’s intelligence.  
  
“I gambled,” Aurelius whispered. “I gambled on dragon fights—” Harry started and snapped to attention; Draco reckoned he must not have known that some people made money fighting dragons in rut against each other “—and I tried to raise money on my name and future prospects because I wanted a better house. Better clothes. A younger wife. A better  _life_.”  
  
And the gambling had been one symptom of that, Draco thought. Aurelius didn’t have the money to support the life that he thought the Malfoy heir was entitled to, but he had tried to live it anyway.  
  
“Is there any way to give you your magic back?” Harry asked abruptly. Draco reckoned that was the only thing he was really interested in, revelations of brand-new illegal activity he’d never known existed aside.  
  
Aurelius stared at him with wet eyes, and said, “No. Sontage absorbed it, and what he didn’t take, the others he assigned to drain me took. They would have used some of it to power the ritual that was supposed to give me control of the Malfoy wards. But they let me know I would always be as weak as I am now.”  
  
Harry just nodded and looked into the distance, saying nothing. Draco ignored the urge to reach over and grip his arm. He knew Harry wouldn’t respond the way Draco wanted right now, and that could be worse than useless, leaving them vulnerable to Aurelius’s knowing eyes. (Well, not knowing right now. But Veritaserum had no negative effect on the memory as far as Draco knew).  
  
“I want to know what you planned to do with me, if you managed to succeed in taking control of the Malfoy wards,” Draco said, putting his attention back where it should be, on the interrogation.  
  
Aurelius struggled for a minute, but his tongue flapped at last. “We would kill you. You wouldn’t be in the way.”  
  
“That’s one method of making sure of that, yes,” Draco said dryly, while his heart hammered for a moment and then stuttered to a stop. It was still chilling to hear his cousin speak so coldly of his death—although some of the coldness probably came from the Veritaserum. Draco didn’t think Aurelius was any braver than he was.  
  
“Do you hate Draco?” Harry asked. “Do you hate me?”  
  
Draco blinked at him. Trust Harry to ask the oddest questions. Whether or not Aurelius hated them was irrelevant. He had still done what he could to kill them, and his emotion wouldn’t have mattered if the blows had landed.  
  
“I’m  _afraid_ of you,” Aurelius whispered. “I resent you for taking the place that could have been mine. I resent Draco for inheriting the property that could have been mine. I hate you for doing that.” For a few seconds, he seemed to struggle with his tongue, as though he didn’t want to admit whatever came next, but the Veritaserum was relentless. “I hate you as much as you can hate someone you’re afraid of.”  
  
“Which is a lot,” Harry noted, his eyes distant again, and Draco remembered that he had probably experienced hatred of the Dark Lord. And perhaps the Dark Lord’s fear, too. Draco remembered Harry saying something about a mind link between the two of them. “What would you do if we let you go?”  
  
A laugh wrenched itself out of Aurelius’s mouth. “Die,” he said. “Sontage and the others would never stop trying to use me for my connection to the artifact and the wards, and they would never forgive my debts. If there was some way that they discovered I was useless, they would kill me.”  
  
“What would you do if you had a way to survive?” Harry asked, and stood up. Draco almost choked when he felt the whirlwind stirring around him.  _This_ was the power he had tried to make Harry summon in the lab, and which Harry had refused to pull up. But he would for the sake of  _Aurelius?_ Draco tried not to choke too badly on his own bile. “Somewhere you could go that was your own, somewhere you could stay where they wouldn’t find you?”  
  
Aurelius said something, the words pulled from him, but Draco didn’t hear it. He had already stood and moved over to Harry, taking his wrist in a clenching grip that he knew had to hurt. Harry just looked at him, and then his eyes flicked away in clear dismissal.  
  
“You  _won’t_ do this,” Draco said, his voice as low and impressive as he could make it. “You  _won’t_ create a shelter for him like the one you made for my father.”  
  
“Why not?” Harry countered. “If we could come up with a way that meant we didn’t have to kill him, but also that he would leave us alone, and in the meantime his enemies— _our_  enemies—wouldn’t use him against us, why shouldn’t I do this?”  
  
“You only wanted to use your magic to protect members of the family,” Draco said.   
  
Harry smiled, and leaned around Draco to look at Aurelius.  
  
“Members of the family you  _like_ ,” Draco said desperately, while feeling as though he stood on the lip of a whirlpool.  
  
“This is a way of protecting us,” Harry said, looking at Draco as indifferently as though Draco was being the unreasonable one. “By keeping you from having to kill, and making sure that Aurelius can never be used against us again.”  
  
“I would rather have him dead than have you waste your magic on him,” Draco said. He wondered if he could even explain the clawing despair that was rising up from the middle of his gut. “You won’t—you won’t use your magic for yourself, but you’ll waste it on  _him_? You’ll use something beautiful and wonderful on that piece of  _rubbish_?”  
  
Harry stared at him, his lips parted and his eyes full of wonder, as though he couldn’t understand how Draco had come to that particular conclusion. Then he shook his head, and his eyes went distant again.   
  
“I’m using my magic to keep us  _both_ safe,” he said. “If Aurelius is locked away from us, then we don’t have to kill him. And it solves the problem of what to do about him. Don’t pretend that you haven’t been worrying about that as much as I have.”  
  
“I worry about you more,” Draco said, ignoring the little gulping noise Aurelius made behind him. Yes, Veritaserum didn’t impair the memory, but Aurelius wasn’t going to be in a position, one way or the other, to use this knowledge against them later. “I’ll worry about you if I bloody well  _want_ to. And I want you to use your magic because it benefits you and gives you pleasure, not because you’re fixated on trying to solve all my problems.”  
  
Harry gave him a soft smile this time, and reached out to lay his hand over Draco’s. “Solving your problems, protecting you, making you happy, gives me pleasure,” he said quietly. “I wonder that you can think it doesn’t.”  
  
“I want you to be bloody selfish, then,” Draco said. “Phrase it that way. Do something for yourself,  _just_ for yourself, not because it’ll help someone.”  
  
Harry shook his head a little, eyes sparking. “You’re asking me to do something you must  _know_ I can’t do.”  
  
“Being selfish is the most natural thing in the world,” Draco snapped.   
  
“Maybe for you.”  
  
Draco smiled. No, he wasn’t looking forward to the nasty argument that he suspected he and Harry were going to have, but it would distract Harry’s attention from this absurd project of protecting Aurelius, and that was all Draco wanted. “If you think about it, and if you think about the things we’ve gone through,” he began, ready to use Hogwarts memories as weapons against Harry if he had to.  
  
The look on Harry’s face stopped him. Harry stepped away from Draco and paced for a moment with his hands behind his back. Draco stood there with his arms folded, glad that he wasn’t facing Aurelius right now. It would have made him look foolish.  
  
“No,” Harry said, turning back around. “This is a solution to a problem that didn’t have one. If we can prove the connection with Sontage, then we can turn the other people who attacked us over to the Ministry with the  _assurance_ that they’ll do something about them. Draining magic and using it for yourself is a crime in every country. They may not like me, they may not like you, but they’ll arrest them. And that gets rid of the problem of what to do about  _them_.”  
  
“Tell me what you see at the end of this,” Draco said, folding his arms even tighter and glaring at Harry as hard as he could. He saw no reason to hide his dislike for this plan.  
  
“I see your cousin safe, and avenged,” Harry said. “And I see us free to move forwards with other plans, like finding out who stabbed you at the Ministry.”  
  
There was a babble from Aurelius about how he’d had  _nothing_ to do with that. Draco ignored him with less effort than he would have thought it would take him. “You realize that I want to kill him?” he whispered.  
  
“No, you don’t,” Harry said, and gave Draco the sort of smile that made him want to hit his husband. “You want the problem to be solved, the mystery to be solved. I have a method that would do that, and you hate that it’ll benefit some people, or not hurt them as much as you wanted to. But you don’t want to kill him.”  
  
“Sometimes I wish that you weren’t present at so many of the important moments in my life,” Draco mumbled. “If you hadn’t seen me lower my wand that time, you’d probably believe I can kill people.”  
  
Harry leaned in and kissed him. After a moment of struggle, because he couldn’t forget that Aurelius was behind them and watching, Draco gave in and kissed him back. He could feel the determination that pulsed through Harry, and knew that he would make this about them and not about Aurelius, one way or the other.  
  
“I know you now,” Harry said, pulling back and shaking his head. “Even if I didn’t know it years ago, I would know  _now_ you can’t kill.”  
  
Draco grunted a little, not willing to concede it yet. “All right, but how are you going to make a place for Aurelius that’s as safe as the one that you made for my father? He still needs people to feed him. I don’t want to be responsible for Aurelius for years.”  
  
“But you’d prefer that to either killing him, or letting him go free, with the possibility someone else might find him and use him against you,” Harry countered.  
  
Draco tried to do some more glaring. Harry just stood there and looked back at him, and Draco finally flung up his hands. “All right, say your solution is the best one. I don’t want to spare a  _lot_ of money towards taking care of him. We only just recovered from a rather spectacular expenditure, remember.”  
  
“Of power, not money.”  
  
“My wand—”  
  
“Didn’t cost that much.” Harry leaned one hip against the wall and watched Draco. “We need to do other things, Draco. Face up to the fact that your mother is probably going to demand more of me. Accept we can’t solve every problem the way you’d like. Find the person who stabbed you at the Ministry.”  
  
“You’re going to tell me next that you have a way to solve that problem, too,” Draco muttered, lowering his head and scraping at the ground with a foot.  
  
“I have an idea,” Harry responded. “Who knows if it’ll work. But we need to make a decision, now, and then turn Shepherd’s fellow warlocks over to the Aurors and put Shepherd himself in a safe place.”  
  
“That would only happen if I made the decision that  _you_ wanted,” Draco said, and did some more glaring.  
  
All Harry did was raise his eyebrows and look calmly back. Draco turned away, biting his lip, and already knowing he would give in. He didn’t have any better plans, and for all that Aurelius was a bastard who should have known better than to ever come after Draco’s demi-husband or his property or Draco himself, Draco still didn’t want to kill him.  
  
But that meant they had something else to deal with.  
  
“I don’t ever want him as my heir,” he told the wall harshly, keeping his head turned to the side so he wouldn’t need to meet Harry’s eyes. “But we need to discuss who, beyond you,  _is_ going to be my heir.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
Draco gaped at Harry for a second, and then shook his head and reached out to take his hands.  
  
 _Never challenge Gryffindors to a contest of courage. You’ll always lose, no matter how much they might not want to face it._


	39. Guest Lists

“I have to admit, this isn’t a method of investigation that would have occurred to me.”  
  
Harry glanced up, and then looked down at the list in front of him with a small snort and a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Draco’s voice was exquisitely modulated, but Harry knew what it meant. It wouldn’t have occurred to Draco to spend an afternoon in the Manor’s library sorting through piles of paper.  
  
“This is our best chance of finding out who was at the party and could have had an  _opportunity_  to stab you,” Harry pointed out, holding up the list of guests in front of him and squinting at it. He didn’t recognize most of the names on it, which wasn’t a surprise since it was composed of pure-bloods. He didn’t see a lot of pure-bloods even as an Auror. The Head Auror tended to arrange things so that other people who weren’t quite as objectionable to former Death Eaters and their families arrested them or answered their complaints. “Everyone who was there is a suspect until it’s proven otherwise, and of course it’s best to look at other lists of other parties so we can tell whether a group or pair of people appear at the same one every time.”  
  
“Except for you, of course.” Draco smiled sweetly at him. “Everyone is a suspect except for you, I mean,” he added, when Harry glanced at him askance. “Unless you’re trying to kill me like this, with boredom.”  
  
“Oh, the things I could do if I had the Malfoy money without your annoying presence.” Harry laid down the list with a few tick marks next to names and stretched his arms over his head, arching his shoulders and rolling his neck. Bending over paper wasn’t something he was used to doing. Auror reports were made to be copied with a few words changed and names scribbled in on the run. “Create life-sized marble statues of myself. Pension off your mother to stop bothering me. Go on a holiday to Majorca.”  
  
“You must have been to  _Majorca_.”  
  
Harry cocked an eyebrow at Draco. “Not really,” he said. “Poor, pitiful relative of a Muggle family that didn’t want me, remember? They went a few times, though.”  
  
Draco’s mouth tended to fold in when they were speaking of the Dursleys, as though he was biting into the sourest lemon ever. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he announced majestically. “Because it might make me angry enough to hunt them down and see what my basilisk wand can do.”  
  
Harry snorted. “You’re not a killer at heart, and you’re not a torturer, either. I could tell you everything about them and you wouldn’t do anything except start a gossip campaign to ruin their lives.” He turned back to the guest lists again.  
  
“You’d do that?”  
  
Harry glanced up. “Let you start a gossip campaign to ruin their lives? Of course not.”  
  
“Tell me anything I wanted to know.” Draco’s face had a shine to it that looked faintly, and disturbingly, like religious fervor. He reached across the table as if he was going to take Harry’s hand, then hesitated and retracted his own. “You haven’t made an offer like that before.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, because it was late and they’d been in here all bloody afternoon with the lists they’d requested from someone Draco knew because they were “putting on a party to rival the one at the Ministry,” and supposedly had to know who to invite. “Whatever you want, whenever you want. Although I think we should find out who stabbed you first.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes and hummed in a pleased way that Harry thought he could grow addicted to. “Quite right,” he said, and turned back to the lists in front of him.  
  
Harry watched him for a few seconds, and the curl of blond hair hanging above his ear, and then smiled and went back to sorting through the lists.  
  
*  
  
Although it was Harry’s idea to search the guest lists, and Harry’s idea to “take care of” the person who had stabbed Draco in some mysterious way he still wouldn’t tell Draco about, Draco was the one who noticed the two names that kept reoccurring together on the lists. He sat back and shook his head.  
  
“I should have suspected,” he said aloud. “But I really didn’t think she was that bloodthirsty, even to avenge an insult. All the time she’s had by herself since the war must have gone to her head.”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
Harry leaned across to him from the other side of the table. Draco took the time to admire the swiftness of that movement, because he could. This was the Auror, the man he had married with fire burning in his eyes.  
  
 _Mine._  
  
A sentiment that meant more than ever, with the names he had discovered on the parchment and the night he had remembered.  
  
“Look at this,” he said, and slid the ten guest lists he’d discovered the “coincidence” on across the table to Harry, the guest list for the party they’d attended in the Ministry, and parties for several weeks before that, and the one they’d held in their own Manor. It didn’t mean they had plotted together all along, of course, but given how long one particular plot had been brewing, Draco saw no reason why that one couldn’t have picked up and assimilated the other.  
  
The way Harry’s breath hissed between his teeth said that Harry had read what Draco wanted him to. Draco nodded and sat back. “Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini attended the same ten parties together,” he said aloud. “We know that Blaise was looking for someone to marry, or otherwise join, because he wanted to abandon his last name and enter a family of rank and distinction. And Greengrass—she might have been separate at first, but after the way you insulted her the evening we danced together…”  
  
“It’s at least something to look into,” Harry said, eyes narrowed, voice cool but distracted, and Draco felt a jolt of pleasure at the bottom of his stomach. He would bet anything this was the way Harry spoke to his Auror partners, like Weasley, accepting them as part of the investigation without flinching or backing down. “You think Greengrass might have been resentful enough to arrange the stabbing?”  
  
“It’s more her style than Blaise’s,” Draco said. “Although I’m sure Blaise encouraged her to arrange something—”  
  
“But Zabini wanted you alive,” Harry interrupted, smashing Draco’s perfectly good theory to rubble with a few words. “Why would he agree to let her hire an assassin, or whatever it was, that left you for dead?”  
  
“There are a number of answers to that,” Draco said. “First of all, we wondered why the attacker didn’t check to be  _sure_ I was dead. We concluded that you must have come in too fast and scared him off, or he was cowardly and ran for it.”  
  
Harry nodded, his eyes never moving from Draco’s face. Draco licked his lips from the sheer heady force of Harry’s attention. Good God, he wished he could travel back in time and tell his younger self that he would have it someday, and it was worth waiting for.  
  
“Perhaps he was never meant to kill me,” Draco said. “Only meant to ‘warn’ me about Daphne’s displeasure. And it would have provided a great opportunity for Blaise to come in and be my hero, if you had left me a little longer instead of realizing I was in danger and running in after me.”  
  
Harry nodded. “But the warning went awry because we didn’t know who had ordered it,” he murmured, his eyes still fastened on Draco.  
  
Draco turned his head a little so he could present his best profile to Harry, not so much because he was vain—although some of that was there—as because he thought Harry might not have had the chance to look his fill. “I never considered Daphne,” he admitted. “I know you insulted her, but she’d insulted you by calling you a Mudblood. Most pure-bloods would accept they were worsted and go their way.”  
  
“But not her?”  
  
Draco shook his head, trying to remember some of the rumors he had heard circulating about Daphne after the war. There was that bit about her biting someone’s shoulder and swearing she’d eat them, wasn’t there? And Blaise had sometimes told him amusing stories that seemed more believable in the heat of firelight and wine than they did when Draco opened his eyes in daylight.  
  
“She could have meant to warn me, yes,” Draco murmured. “It could have been a way for her to express her frustration. She could have meant to insult you. Maybe she did the stabbing herself and was drunk at the time.” He shook his head. “The problem is that we don’t know what her motive was, or even for sure if she was behind it. The coincidence of her name with Blaise’s is suggestive, but maybe it wasn’t her.”  
  
“Well, there’s a simple way to settle that,” Harry said, and stood up twirling his wand between his fingers. “Let’s go ask her.”  
  
Draco stared at him, and then realized that wasn’t working, because Harry evidently didn’t pick up on his message from only his stare. Draco had to speak it, between clenched teeth that made his head throb. “Are you mad?”  
  
“Why would I be?” Harry smiled tranquilly at him. “From the method of her attack, if it  _was_ her attack, she isn’t all that smart. If it wasn’t her, then she has no reason to be expecting us and will be taken by surprise when I sweep in and snatch her. Either way, it’ll be easy enough to pick her up and make her regret anything she did to us.” He tossed his head, eyes so bright and hot that he made Draco’s fingers ache.  
  
“You’ll get in trouble,” Draco said. “Kidnapping pure-bloods with a presence in the social world is a lot worse than taking a nobody like my cousin, who even other pure-bloods are ashamed to own.”  
  
“Then no one has to know it’s me,” Harry said. “You can come up with a way to help me.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”  
  
Harry leaned forwards. “More dangerous than leaving someone out there who can strike at you again?” he asked quietly. “Because that’s what this comes down to, Draco. Either doing what we can,  _now,_  to make the problem go away, or watching it grow, and grow heads, and return like a hydra in the night.”  
  
Draco blinked in spite of himself. “You  _do_ have a way of turning a phrase,” he said.  
  
Harry remained with his hands poised above the table, and looked at him calmly. “Do I have your attention, is the important thing. And your agreement?”  
  
Draco huffed and folded his arms. “Where did this reckless Gryffindor side of you come from? Just a little while ago, you were determined to take all the time we had to to figure out this mystery and make sure we didn’t lose a chance at the real villain.” He tossed Harry’s words at him without much thought that they would slow him down, and with a deep, real hope curling in his belly that they wouldn’t.  
  
Harry smiled at him with teeth as bright and sharp as a piranha’s. “It’s always been here, but most of the time, I’ve been reactive with it, only exercising it in a crisis. There’s no reason it has to go on being that way. Let’s make a move for ourselves, now, before Greengrass realizes that she’s in danger from the way we took down Blaise.”  
  
“If it was her,” Draco murmured, deliberately provocative. “If he had anything to do with it. You know it might turn out he didn’t.”  
  
Harry showed his teeth so much now that Draco had a momentary fear his lips would fall off his face. “Then let’s prove it. I’m more than happy to set about proving it.”  
  
And Draco, his blood dancing in his veins, couldn’t come up with a good reason to go on opposing his husband.  
  
*  
  
Harry waited a few minutes, glancing from his watch to the sun in the sky overhead. Greengrass had a modest sinecure at the Ministry, Draco had told him, but he was emphatic that she didn’t really work. She just showed up once or twice a week, hung around in the offices, chatted, spread her vicious brand of gossip, and then wandered out to lunch and didn’t come back for the rest of the day. She changed the restaurants she ate at often, too, and didn’t usually make meetings or dates for lunch; she seemed to entertain most of her friends back at her home.  
  
No one would notice she was missing for hours, if they took her on at lunch.  
  
Now, Harry was only waiting for her to step out of the Ministry. He had checked his disguise several times—a glamour charm that darkened his hair and changed the shape of his face, Muggle contacts that dimmed what Draco insisted on calling the “distracting green” of his eyes, and a smear and dab of thick makeup over the scar—until Draco had floated a mirror in front of him and told him it was perfect.   
  
The problem was that it didn’t only have to be perfect, Harry thought. It had to be attractive to Daphne Greengrass, and Draco hadn’t been able to tell him much about what she preferred.  
  
Finally, though, she came out, sauntering along in her green robes, which did look nice with her blonde hair and the flowing way she wore it, Harry had to admit. But her hair didn’t look as nice as Draco’s.  
  
Not that he was thinking about  _that,_ either. Talk about distracting.  
  
Harry arranged the signet ring on his finger—a fake one, proclaiming he was from a minor but pure-blooded family—and left his corner behind the Ministry, gaping at Greengrass. She saw him and turned towards him. Harry whipped his head away, and let his cheeks flush deeply as he began to walk off.  
  
Then he glanced back at her as if he couldn’t help himself, and saw her coming towards him at a slow but confident walk, her eyes narrowed as if that would better help her evaluate her prey. Harry cleared his throat and shook his head a little, as though that would help him clear it.  
  
“I don’t even know who you are,” he whispered, as she stopped in front of him and looked at him with an unmistakable meaning in her face.  
  
Greengrass laughed. If the memory of her saying that his blood was muddy didn’t burn so brightly in Harry’s mind, he might even have found the noise attractive. “But I know that you like me, and that’s enough.” She looked at his signet ring and his eyes and his hair and probably other things Harry didn’t even know about but which mattered to someone who was considering taking a causal lover, and took his arm. “I was going to lunch. Join me?”  
  
It was just what Harry and Draco had hoped for when they came up with this plan, and which Harry hadn’t known they could achieve. He nodded, gaping despite himself at Greengrass—and not for the reason she thought—when she turned hard enough to give him a glimpse beneath her robes. Not much, just a flash of pale skin along her side and flank, but Harry reckoned it would be irresistible for a lot of people.  
  
It wasn’t for him. His skin seemed to burn, remembering the teeth that had attacked him in the mist during the demi-marriage ritual, and the bonds he had created to Draco.  
  
But he was doing this to find out what Greengrass knew, and ultimately to protect his family. He went with her.  
  
*  
  
Daphne had chosen the most expensive restaurant in wizarding London, or at least the most expensive one that had opened since the war, a lovely but private place called Fallen Eden. Draco knew he couldn’t follow her and Harry in there without revealing himself, and spying in was discouraged through discreet Privacy Charms.  
  
Luckily, there were spells available to a married couple—and a married couple where one of them had a powerful wand that obeyed his every whim—that ordinary Privacy Charms couldn’t do anything about. Draco leaned back at his table in another restaurant across the street and studied the glass of water in front of him. The images wavered and danced in the water and sometimes on the side of the cup, which only meant Draco had to cup his hands in front of it when someone wandered by.   
  
He had chosen to place this surveillance spell on Harry’s cloak collar, which meant he had had a good image of Daphne as they walked to Fallen Eden, and now that Harry had taken off his cloak and draped it over an empty chair at the table, he had a good view of both of them.  
  
Harry leaned his hands on the table and gazed at Daphne with wide eyes, now and then ducking his head and looking aside with flushed cheeks, playing besotted but shocked innocent for all he was worth. Daphne smiled at him over a glass of the delicately-flavored wine that was thought proper to begin the meal at Fallen Eden.  
  
Draco nodded slightly. They had her. He had remembered some of the things Daphne had confessed about the Hufflepuffs she seduced, that year after the war, and while they couldn’t make Harry into a literal Hufflepuff, they could give him the same sort of background and naïve charm.  
  
As long as Draco looked at it that way, remembering that it was a mission and Harry was playing a part, he could smile and even shake his head when Daphne put a hand on Harry’s and he nearly knocked over his glass in response. He didn’t go so far  _as_ to knock it over, of course. That would mark him as too gauche for Daphne, just as a refusal to go to Fallen Eden would have marked him as too cheap to be worth her time. Harry knew exactly how far to go, how to flirt and hold her attention.  
  
But when Draco thought of the fact that it was  _his_ husband flirting and acting like this, then his amusement disappeared.  
  
His hands wanted to clench around the water glass and toss it to the floor, sometimes, or smash it to pieces. He wanted to shriek and lash out. He wanted to march across the street and taken Harry forcibly by his cloak collar and drag him back to bed and fuck him. None of this nonsense about his husband holding hands with someone else, even in the pursuit of truth about their enemies.  
  
 _Demi-husband,_ his mother would have said, a touch of coolness in her voice. With Narcissa, a touch was enough.  
  
Draco bared his teeth at the water glass, and then went and got some food so he would have something to do with his teeth other than grind them. The last thing he wanted was to wear down his enamel. Daphne wasn’t worth that.  
  
He sipped at his water and took bites of hot, spicy meat while he studied the glass. He could make out some words from the way their lips shaped them, but the spell didn’t come with sound. Draco would have had to do something more complicated to make that happen, something Daphne would be much more likely to notice.  
  
But he saw the moment when Harry turned dark red and glared down at his plate, and Daphne laughed in what looked like deep humor even though Draco couldn’t hear it, reaching out one hand to let her nails flutter gently down Harry’s face.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and took a long, long bite of meat, after which he had to drink most of the water because of the burning in his throat from the food. So Daphne had touched Harry. He had known she would when he agreed to this ruse. She might need to do a lot more than that before this was done and Harry could go back to the Manor, and Draco had agreed to it. He had agreed to it all.  
  
He shouldn’t be on the verge of marching over to Fallen Eden and destroying their whole plan because he was jealous.  
  
 _But I am going to make sure that our interrogation of Daphne doesn’t take long. I can’t wait for hours._  
  
He opened his eyes and checked the glass again, and then started to his feet. The viewpoint had moved. Harry had once again settled the cloak on his shoulders, which meant Draco couldn’t catch more than a blurred glimpse of his face, and he was tenderly settling Daphne’s over her shoulders. Daphne fluttered her eyelashes at him and tilted her head back enough to give him a good look at her color-changing eyes.  
  
 _Glamours,_ Draco thought. They hadn’t looked like that when they were students together in Slytherin, or even a few weeks ago at the party he’d held to celebrate the demi-marriage.  
  
Harry, of course, was playing the sort of fool who wouldn’t notice a change, so he let his jaw dangle and then sucked it back together and said something that made Daphne laugh and toss her head back again. They left together, Daphne’s hand on Harry’s arm. When they came out of Fallen Eden, Draco could see them with his own eyes, and they were turning up the street in the direction of an Apparition point.  
  
The plan had succeeded, then, at least in the sense that Daphne had accepted Harry’s invitation to spend the afternoon together. Draco had only to follow them.  
  
He paid for his meal by the simple expedient of tossing down a few Galleons and made his way to the door, casting a Disillusionment Charm on himself. When someone gaped at him, he said in a low mutter, “Think she’s cheating,” and ducked out the door, seeing wisely nodding heads behind him.  
  
 _Change the pronoun, and it would be almost true._  
  
Draco ground his teeth again, until he remembered that he didn’t want to waste the enamel on Daphne, and then did his best to stop. He pasted a pleasant expression on his face and sauntered until he was sure he was a reasonable distance from anyone who had seen him cast the charm. Then he sped up.  
  
Harry and Daphne were almost at the Apparition point, but Harry knew to delay until he felt Draco touch his arm. Draco angled to come in at his side, the opposite side from Daphne, and saw her fluttering her eyes again in an attempt to enchant him. Draco could hear them now.  
  
“…never met someone like you before,” Harry was saying in a husky voice, staring at her.  
  
“I know that,” Daphne said, and lowered her eyelashes.  
  
 _And that’s true, but not the way you imagine,_ Draco thought, and took Harry’s arm with a little nod he couldn’t prevent himself from giving, even though Harry wouldn’t be able to see it.  
  
Harry stiffened for the barest second, but, good for him, he didn’t start and give away the game. He smiled at Daphne and drew her close, slowly enough that Draco could come with him and keep his hold at the same time. “Shall we go?” he murmured.  
  
Another flutter of Daphne’s eyelashes, and they were off, Apparating straight to a bedroom in the Manor that Draco had cleared of anti-Apparition wards for the occasion. Draco was dragged along, too, and he had mad fantasies of telling Ossy to prepare his bedroom, or  _a_ bedroom. The nearest one to the one they were taking Daphne to.  
  
Because he didn’t want to fuck Harry in the same room where they would interrogate her, but God, he wanted to fuck Harry.


	40. Some Answers

Harry had to say this for her: Once she realized what was going on, Daphne Greengrass knew how to react, and fast.  
  
The walls came into being around them. Greengrass turned her head, smiling, eyes lingering on the furniture and the colors in the bedroom as though she could use them to judge how wealthy Harry was. And hell, for all Harry knew, she could. What just said “expensive” to him might explain itself to her in terms of Galleons.  
  
But her face changed a moment later, and she whirled towards him, extending her wand towards his heart. Her eyes were narrowed, her throat visibly bounding as she came to terms with something.  
  
“I should have known,” she whispered. “I should have  _known_ who you were.” She gave a loathing look to Harry’s hands, as though being touched by a Mudblood was worse than anything else she could imagine. “You can’t do  _anything_ gracefully.”  
  
“Including kidnapping you, you mean?” Harry asked calmly. He saw no need to react. This one bedroom had dropped the anti-Apparition wards so they could come into it, but Draco would have snapped them back up the minute they appeared—and Draco still hadn’t revealed himself under the Disillusionment Charm. “I thought I managed that gracefully enough.”  
  
Greengrass hissed like a snake who didn’t know how to speak its own language, and struck at him.  
  
Or she tried. Her wand twisted neatly out of her hand, and flew towards Harry, since he had cast a nonverbal  _Expelliarmus_ , always a good precaution when dealing with someone this enraged. Then Draco was on her, grabbing her arms from behind and twisting her towards the floor, kicking her legs out from under her when she tried to resist.  
  
“Draco,” she said, and stared back and forth between the two of them as Harry removed the glamour and his contacts. The makeup over the dragon scar he left in place, for now. He didn’t need to hear Greengrass make fun of it. It would be hard enough to retain his temper during the interrogation.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and smiled at her in a way Harry had never seen. In fact, Draco looked a little strange in general, with a violent flush to his cheeks and his hands clenched so hard in Greengrass’s robe that he must have twisted the collar up around her neck and be hurting her. Harry wondered if something else had happened while he was flirting with Greengrass to make Draco upset or worried. “A good choice, that first name. If you had called out ‘Malfoy,’ then both of us would have had to answer.”  
  
“You can’t do this,” Greengrass said, in the confused manner a child might use. She twisted and kicked in Draco’s grasp, and seemed more astonished than ever when he simply restrained her. “You’ll get in trouble for taking me.”  
  
“During your long lunch?” Draco was flitting his hands over her robes now without letting go of the grip he used to imprison her, feeling for weapons, Harry assumed. He took something silver and twisted out of one pocket and flung it aside with a shudder. To Harry, it only looked like a corkscrew, but he had never made a special study of weapons the way he had of spells. “I don’t think so.”  
  
Greengrass let her head droop for a second, panting. She wasn’t fooling anybody, though, and although Draco watched her instead of touching her, he was ready the second she moved again, trying to whip her head back to bash him in the nose with her skull. He simply leaned back out of the way, and then kept feeling for weapons, smiling into her face as he did so.   
  
“A good try,” he said, condescendingly enough that Harry had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. That would enrage Greengrass. “Really, it was.”  
  
This time, Greengrass tried to kick and bite him, and Harry was tired of that nonsense. He bound her with  _Incarcerous_ ropes and put her on the bed. Greengrass was unable to move; Harry had used some of the tightest knots that the spell could conjure. It didn’t prevent her from trying to spit in Draco’s face.  
  
“None of that,” Harry said, his voice cold enough that Greengrass snapped her eyes to him at once. “We just need to know how long you’ve been conspiring with Blaise Zabini, and who you used to stab Draco in the Ministry.”  
  
Greengrass flinched so hard that the bed bounced. Harry exchanged a hard smile with Draco. Of course she would deny that she’d done it, when she was here and surrounded by unsympathetic enemies, but that involuntary reaction was all the proof either of them needed.  
  
“You’re mental,” Greengrass whispered, shaking her head. “You have no—you have  _no idea_  what you’re dealing with.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Harry agreed pleasantly. “Not yet. But you’re going to tell us. And you should be aware that we already know about the other things Zabini did to try to rid himself of me and take my place. We might not know about all the parts that you had in it, but he gave you up to us.”  
  
Draco blinked at him, but Harry maintained his bland smile. If Greengrass thought Zabini had betrayed her, she had even less reason to trust him after this, and she might turn any spite she still had on him.  
  
“He did not,” Greengrass whispered, but her teeth was clenching. Harry reflected that the problem with having friends in the way these Slytherins had friends was that you distrusted them as much as you relied on them, probably more. “He promised that he would never do anything like that.”  
  
Draco laughed at her and tapped his basilisk wand against his palm. “He had a better offer.”  
  
Greengrass shut her eyes and lay there as though struggling to master her doubt and take apart the suspicions forming in her mind. Harry didn’t intend to give her that time. He leaned towards her and made her jump when he touched his wand to the center of her forehead. She stared at him with some muddy mixture of dread and desire.  
  
“Listen,” Harry said quietly. “We want the full and true story of that night at the Ministry party, anything you know about it. If you don’t tell us, then we’ll simply take it from your mind.” He had never learned to be a painless or  _graceful_ Legilimens, but he had managed to force his way into Snape’s mind, and sometimes a few other people’s when information was vital and they were running out of time. He thought Greengrass would probably find that threat more disturbing than Veritaserum.  
  
Sure enough, her whole body flinched. She lay still and panted for a few moments, hands folded behind her head. Then she said, in a high, thin voice, “You can’t—you can’t seriously believe that I wanted to sleep with  _you_.”  
  
Harry discounted that. She had made him the offer the night of Draco’s party, and she had been attracted enough by a few relatively simple changes in his face and the way he acted. “That doesn’t matter right now,” he said. “What we want to know is whether you were involved in that stabbing. Did you do it yourself, or hire someone else?”  
  
Greengrass sneered. “As though I would want to get  _blood_ on my hands.”  
  
“Hired someone else, then,” Draco said, prowling in from the side. Harry had to admire the angles of his face at the moment, the poised and perfect sneer there. “I told you, Harry. Someone like her is never going to do her own dirty work.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I can see the attraction of that philosophy, but she should have covered her tracks better. Or been smart enough not to trust a Slytherin, perhaps.” He looked pointedly at Greengrass.  
  
That made her spit and twist in her bonds. “You know nothing about it,” she whispered. “You know  _nothing_ about pure-bloods, or the way we want to marry.”  
  
“I know enough to realize that it was counterproductive for you to stab Draco—excuse me, arrange to have him stabbed,” Harry added, when the perfectly furious look settled back over her face. “Zabini wanted to marry him. Was he happy about you threatening him?”  
  
Greengrass seemed to have forgotten that, at one point, she hadn’t wanted them to know this. She sneered and drew herself up. “He was going to go in and present himself as the hero, while you, as a false demi-husband, wouldn’t even have known Draco was in danger. He only had one thing to do, and he  _blew_ it. I played my part perfectly.”  
  
Harry gave her a little smile. “Who stabbed him? Who did you hire?”  
  
“That’s a name that I don’t need to give you.” Greengrass’s gaze was clear and cold, and there was something about her face that Harry might have admitted was beautiful if his tastes tended that way. As it was, he found people who had left his husband bleeding on the floor in a bathroom repulsive. “I hired him, and he stabbed you, and that was all he was there to do. Not too deep, and in the right place. I would have distracted you, Potter, but you decided to look for Draco first.” She shook her head. “Not my fault that it didn’t work out the way Blaise wanted it to.”  
  
Harry looked up at Draco. Draco nodded slightly. He didn’t think they needed to feed Veritaserum to Greengrass to get the name. More than likely, she was telling the truth, and it was only a random mercenary, the kind of wizard who would do anything for a few Galleons. He wouldn’t come after Draco again. If Greengrass hadn’t paid him,  _she_ was the one who would have to watch out for his attacks.  
  
“I have no objection to whatever you want to do,” Draco said, his eyes glittering and his face flushed. Harry cast him another curious glance. He looked almost aroused by the predicament they had Greengrass in, but Harry couldn’t imagine that he would—  
  
 _Oh_.  
  
The way Draco looked at  _him_  was what made the flush deepen in his cheeks, and his hands twitched as if he would reach across the bed and grab Harry, drag him in and drape him over the bed. Harry looked off to the side, clearing his throat awkwardly. Greengrass stared between him and Draco at that, and Draco’s smile deepened, his eyelids falling over his eyes briefly as if to shield what burned there from her gaze.  
  
“Do you want to kill Draco now?” Harry asked. “Or me?” He was a little surprised that Greengrass hadn’t chosen to retaliate against him directly, when he was the one who had insulted her, but there was that complicated, indirect, Slytherin pure-blood thing again.  
  
“No,” Greengrass said. “Why should I? I paid you back for the insult. Not my fault that you were too stupid to recognize the repayment when you saw it.” She sneered at Harry again.  
  
Draco looked down at her, and Harry thought for a moment he would strangle her. His twitching hands certainly tended that way. Harry interrupted hastily. “Then I think a Memory Charm ought to be enough. Draco?”  
  
Draco looked at him with eyes as motionless as a lizard’s. Harry had to repeat his words before Draco shook his head a little and said, “Yes. I think that’ll work.” He drew his wand, and laid it against Greengrass’s forehead.  
  
“You know I’ll get around it,” Greengrass said, staring up, apparently communicating something to Draco with the words that Harry didn’t understand, because Draco’s jaw tightened. “No matter what you do, you were always shite at Memory Charms, Draco. I’ll find my way around this, and I’ll make sure that you regret it when I do.”  
  
“ _Enough_ ,” Harry snapped at her. “I don’t actually enjoy hearing someone threaten my husband, Greengrass.”  
  
“I’m not concerned about you,” Greengrass said, in the kind of empty tone that indicated she really might not be. “I was talking with your  _husband_ here.”  
  
“Right, Draco,” Harry said, feeling a great coldness take him over. His voice mimicked hers. He could have borne it if she had simply threatened him, or if her retaliation had been against him directly, the Memory Charm would have been enough. But to hear her speak like that of Draco, as though their demi-marriage was nothing… “I want to mingle another spell with the Memory Charm, if I might, Draco?”  
  
Draco turned to him, his breathing speeding up and his flush getting even deeper. Harry blinked until he remembered what Draco had said about Harry’s more powerful magic getting him interested.  
  
Harry blushed, because he couldn’t help it, but he didn’t see a reason to back down when he was doing this for his husband’s sake. He cocked his head back and lifted his wand in a slow, sensuous movement instead.  
  
Draco closed his eyes, with a small movement at his groin. His voice was a little choked. “What spell?”  
  
“Just one to give her a generalized slimy feeling,” Harry said, and smiled into Greengrass’s face. It surprised him, now, how little he cared about her. This was for Draco, all of it. “And  _you_ make the suggestion, via the Memory Charm, that she slept with a Hufflepuff and noticed that his cock was  _dripping_ after she woke up next to him. She really ought to get tested for that, don’t you think? Only the feeling won’t leave, no matter what cleansing charms she uses down there.”  
  
Draco burst out laughing. Greengrass simply gaped at Harry as though she had no idea who had stolen his skin and replaced him with a Slytherin.  
  
“Excellent,” Draco said, when he could stop laughing. “I admire you sometimes, Harry.” He dropped his voice. “I want you.”  
  
“Yeah, I knew that,” Harry pointed out.  
  
Draco’s eyes glowed with a fiercer light, and it occurred to Harry that letting Draco know he was doing this to show off to him might not be the best way to calm Draco’s desire down.  
  
 _Do I want to calm it down?_  
  
He wasn’t sure, and he had to admit that showing off in front of Greengrass was increasing his own desire, making a slow, long, burning feeling settle in the bottom of his stomach. So he smiled at Draco and turned back to Greengrass, and cast his spell as Draco cast the Memory Charm.  
  
Draco’s voice droned out the words he and Harry had agreed on, adding a few details about humiliation and Greengrass’s imaginary lover throwing her out of their bed that Harry didn’t think were necessary, but supposed were Draco’s part of their revenge. All the while, Draco’s eyes were on him, and his smile was deep, and his head kept inclining as though he intended to bow to Harry.  
  
Harry would keep him from doing that if he intended to, which didn’t seem likely. Harry’s hands would keep Draco from doing anything but falling on the bed and yielding to him, would pry his mouth open if he tried to keep it closed, would stroke Draco’s skin and make him moan.  
  
It was enough to make him practically dance with joy when Draco ordered Ossy to Apparate Greengrass back to the middle of Diagon Alley, and they were finally alone. He moved towards Draco, but Draco grabbed him and propelled him up against the wall before Harry could throw him to the bed, his mouth seeking Harry’s.  
  
Harry understood a minute later. Of course Draco didn’t want to have sex on the bed where Greengrass had lain telling them about her attempt to murder him. Harry understood, in fact he approved, and his hands were just as fast in diving under Draco’s clothes as Draco’s hands were in diving under his.  
  
 _Just as long as we get to a bed quickly._  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t believe how hungry he was. He had thought he would calm down a little when Daphne was on the bed in front of them, making her spitting noises and struggling in the ropes like a cat, but he hadn’t. Not when Harry was looking at him like that, conscious of Draco enjoying him and  _wanting_ Draco to enjoy him.  
  
Draco had never before had a lover who was initially reluctant in his bed before, and he had known nothing about what that reluctance turning to teasing would do to his passion.  
  
Now he knew. It kindled him like a burning sacrifice, and he drove Harry into the bedroom he’d had Ossy prepare, licking and sucking at his lips, shivering when Harry pinched his nipples and ran his hands up and down Draco’s shoulders, but resisting the temptation to simply give in. Harry would have to  _earn_ that.  
  
And he had things to teach Harry, things to show him.  
  
Namely, how happy he made Draco.  
  
This bedroom had large windows with long red curtains and a huge bed that would probably have been dusty in any home without house-elves, and still did have a faintly abandoned air. Draco grinned as he pitched Harry onto it. Who knew who had last slept here, guest or Malfoy? Either way, Draco fully intended to surpass anything they had done.  
  
Harry flipped over on his stomach. Draco wondered what he was doing, until Harry cast a spell that floated his shirt off over his head and wriggled his arse at the same time.  
  
 _Wriggled. His. Arse._  
  
Draco went slightly mad. That was his only explanation for pouncing on Harry and trying to take his trousers off with his teeth. At least Harry helped him with the trousers, although sometimes he laughed and Draco had to break off from the stripping and pop up to occupy his mouth with a kiss. It was nothing personal, just what he had to do, and Harry was gracious about accepting it, tilting his head back to take Draco’s tongue into his mouth, and licking Draco’s lips in return until Draco almost forgot that such things as recalcitrant trousers existed.  
  
Harry stripped Draco naked before Draco got a hand on Harry's pants, and then it was Harry’s kicking as much as Draco’s tugging that removed them. And then Draco could lean back and look at Harry’s body, his chest flinching in and out with his breath, his taut stomach, his cock resting and dripping there, and bow his head.  
  
Harry arched up, almost guiding himself into Draco’s mouth before Draco got it down. Draco made him lie still by the simple expedient of slamming his hips to the bed, and finally got his mouth where he wanted it, around Harry’s cock. Then he was sucking and moaning, and Harry was shouting as he reached down to grab Draco’s hair.  
  
Draco didn’t enjoy being pulled away the way Harry did to him, and made his point with an especially hard suck. But when he pulled back and stared Harry in the eye, Harry didn’t look at all repentant.  
  
“Get in me before I strain something,” he snapped.  
  
Draco went a little mad again, and although he was sure that Harry could have told all the movements he made as he slicked his fingers and got them inside Harry, and then his cock and got it inside Harry, his own memory turned into a rush of sensation. There was the tightness and warmth around one part of his body, and then around another, the most sensitive part. He shut his eyes and bit his lip and rocked. It was a long moment before he could touch Harry with his hands, or part his lips to speak, or open his eyes.  
  
When he could look, Harry’s face was red, and straining after all. Draco started to lean into him, reach towards him. He was afraid that he might have hurt Harry without realizing it and that Harry had simply borne the pain because he didn’t want to ruin Draco’s pleasure.  
  
But Harry threw his head back and cried out, and Draco knew then that he had been trying to keep the cry in, as if it would embarrass him. The flush in his cheeks were growing redder and darker, too, and the way he reached out, his fingers clutching at air, to thread his hands into Draco’s hair and onto his shoulders, always slipping, never touching for long, showed how violent this was.  
  
How  _good_.  
  
Draco smiled smugly—he knew it was smug—and rocked, then lost the smugness in a gasp and rush of new pleasure. Harry twisted a little and raised himself up, with what strength Draco didn’t know, and shoved himself back.  
  
Finally, they found a rhythm that suited them both, or sometimes suited them. Harry kept stopping to break it up with fast, irregular thrusts into the air, and Draco continually forgot what he was doing and groped Harry’s hips to hold him still for just a little while, because what he felt at that moment in time was so incredible. But then it would go back to the endless mess of thrusting and thrashing and gasping and sighing, and Draco buried his face against Harry’s shoulder when he came, because that was what was there.  
  
“I love this.”  
  
Draco blinked and lifted his head. Harry was shaking his head as though to deny what he’d said, and driving himself backwards. Draco caught his chin and turned his head towards him as well as he could, so he could see into Harry’s eyes when they opened and caught his.  
  
“Love me, or love  _this_?” Draco whispered, with a thrust of his hips to emphasize the point. He almost slipped out of Harry, but recovered his balance in time, with a little jerk of his haunches.  
  
“Why can’t I love both?” Harry muttered, and tried to hook an arm around Draco’s neck, a gesture that almost sent them both crashing off the bed. When Draco braced his elbows in the sheets and held them still, Harry gasped into his ear, “But you more,” and shuddered around him, clenching down hard.  
  
Draco shut his eyes and held him, shaking all over. The jealousy that had possessed him when Harry was flirting with Daphne, the desire that had taken over when he saw how strongly Harry was prepared to defend his family, had melted into this, something soft and molten and as dark a red as the curtains of the bed around them. Harry would hold the family and defend and protect them all, Draco knew that. Well, maybe Draco could be the one to hold and defend  _him_  if Harry insisted on not thinking about his own safety.  
  
“Love both of you,” Harry mumbled into the pillow, a little drunkenly.  
  
Draco didn’t think he knew the words to respond, so he pulled Harry’s head back and kissed him instead. That would do for words, between them, for right now.  
  
It would do for a promise, and it would do for the future.


	41. Back at It

"I still can't believe that you're going to construct a permanent place for that coward to live."  
  
Harry hunched his shoulders a little and did his best not to look away from the book he was studying, the book that talked about various kinds of shelter spells and the ways to make them permanent. He and Draco had worked together so perfectly yesterday with the way they'd trapped and tricked Daphne. He didn't know why they couldn't do the same thing now. "I already said that this is the only solution I could think of," he snapped, flipping a page. "They could get Shepherd out of Azkaban if they're really as powerful as he says they are--not only that, the Ministry might decline to try him." He was a little worried that they might refuse to try the wizards Harry would be bringing in who had assaulted the wards, but that was the reason he had wanted proof that they'd helped to drain Shepherd's magic, a Dark enough crime that the Ministry probably wouldn't refuse. "If you have a better plan, by all means tell me now."  
  
Draco paced around in front of him and slammed down one hand. Harry jumped and glared at him. Draco's eyes were narrowed, his nostrils pinched as though someone was holding them shut. Harry folded his hands on top of the book and waited. Draco had something that he wanted to say, clearly, so let him say it.  
  
"You don't know for  _sure_ that the Ministry's grudge against you runs that deep," Draco said quietly. A dangerous quietness, Harry thought, and only kept from glancing at the basilisk wand in Draco's hands with a huge effort. "You don't know for sure that they would refuse to hold a prisoner just because you're the one bringing him in, and you're the one he threatened and assaulted."  
  
"I know that I can't risk it," Harry said. "And remember that we would have to tell the  _truth_ about who Shepherd assaulted. It was you, mostly. What would they say to that? Do you think they would willingly hold someone who hurt a Malfoy? They would find some excuse to let him go, and then our enemies could pick him up and use him against you again. No. I'm going to give him a permanent home where that can't happen." He turned back to the book.  
  
Draco gripped it and shut it. Harry barely got his fingers out in time. He leaned back in his chair and gave Draco a flat stare, not sure what else he was supposed to do.  
  
"You're going to waste your magic on him," Draco said.  
  
"On someone who's a member of the family," Harry said. "I thought everything would be okay as long as I was working for someone who's a member of the family."  
  
" _I_ want you able to use your power for any reason, remember," Draco said, and ground his teeth so hard that Harry was surprised he didn't bite his tongue in the middle of it. "Including to defend yourself."  
  
"If you want me able to use it for any reason," Harry said, putting his hands on the table and drawing his legs up, ready to move if he had to, "then you ought to accept that I'm using it for this one."  
  
"I don't," Draco said. "Not when you'll spend so much of your time and patience on him, over and over and fucking  _over_ again." His voice rose, and then he caught it back, panting.  
  
"Just once," Harry said. "I intend for the house-elves to be the ones who take care of him. If you think that I'm going to use all my magic to conjure food for him, then maybe I can see why you're upset. But even though I thought about that, I decided it wouldn't work. So you ought to be happy."  
  
"I am not fucking happy," Draco said, so pleasantly that it took Harry a minute to realize the sense of the words. "I don't want you to do this."  
  
"Yes, but although you're technically the head of the family, you don't get to dictate every single thing I do with my life," Harry said back just as pleasantly, shoving the chair back so he could stand. Draco caught his breath as though Harry's defiance meant something more than Harry thought it did, but he didn't move forwards or try to hold him down, so Harry stood up. "You don't have to watch me expend the magic. I don't require anything but your key to open the doors of the dungeon cell. Or is that going to be refused to me?" he added, as he watched Draco hesitate and blink.  
  
Draco hissed and pulled the key from his pocket, but he clutched it tight instead of tossing it to Harry. "I wish you could see the way you recklessly spend magic as I do," he said.  
  
"As a waste?" Harry snorted. "I wouldn't  _want_ to see it that way. Magic is meant to be used. If I have more to use than other people do, that's a blessing, of sorts, and I should just go ahead and use it. I don't understand what you think I would use it for if not to defend and protect my family."  
  
Draco bit his lips savagely, and then thrust out the key. "Since nothing I can say will convince you, then  _take_ it."  
  
"I preferred the way you looked the last time you said those words," Harry retorted, and swiped the key from his outstretched hand.  
  
Draco stood there staring at him for another moment, and then turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the room. Harry buried his head in his hands before he followed.  
  
He knew they were doing much better than they had been, when it came to making the marriage a real one, but it seemed there were still some barriers that he couldn’t cross.   
  
*  
  
Draco took his broom outside into the gardens, to soar over them and brood alone. Harry had gone to the dungeons to be with  _Aurelius,_ of all people. It still amazed Draco that he could see anything good in the man who had almost had him killed.  
  
 _And how much of that comes from his general disregard for his own life and safety, and how much from his tendency to forgive anyone who has a different opinion from his?_  
  
Draco didn’t know, and as he spun his broom in a steep dive at the ground, he admitted to himself that he really had no idea how he could find out, either. He pulled up again and took sharply to the sky, swirling back and forth in a lazy circle. His fingers dug into the broom hard enough that he winced and pulled them back a minute later with splinters under his nails.  
  
Then he pulled up a few feet above the grass and hovered there with his eyes shut, his lungs working as he struggled to breathe normally, and admit that he wasn’t afraid for Harry, or even all that angry with him. He was just  _frustrated,_ and he didn’t know how to let go of the frustration and accept what Harry wanted to do.  
  
It was wasteful, he thought. That much, at least, Harry would be able to admit if he was a little more distant from the situation. Why create an impregnable shelter for someone who was worth so little? Why not save that kind of defense for the Manor’s wards, or at least Lucius, the way Harry already had? Aurelius could go to Azkaban, as far as Draco was concerned. The Ministry might hate Harry, but not enough to let someone go who had tried to assassinate him.  
  
 _Maybe._    
  
That was the horrible thing, that they might not be able to depend even on publicity that said Harry was the Chosen One and must be kept safe now that he had married a Malfoy.  
  
Draco kicked the broom backwards and flew towards the far end of the gardens, snarling steadily under his breath as he did so. No, he couldn't depend on the Ministry, and Harry was right that the distant master that Aurelius's companions had served might be able to get him out of Azkaban or use Aurelius against them somehow. Perhaps neither of those things would happen.  
  
But Harry was done with  _perhaps,_ Draco knew, and so was he.  
  
He landed on the grass after a long backwards flight, and sighed into his hands. All right. He had done what he could to make his point-of-view clear, and Harry had still rejected it. It was probably best to give in and make a compromise now, rather than continue the opposition that he knew was useless.  
  
 _My mother would encourage me to continue._  
  
Draco shrugged. Narcissa had also tried to demand that Harry do something she had to know was impossible. For her, compromises would be an admission of weakness. She was still married to someone who was part of the family by blood.  
  
 _This situation is different. I'm not my father, and I accepted that a long time ago, but now it's time for my mother to accept that I'm not just her son, either._  
  
Draco went upstairs to wait for the time when Harry should be done making his impregnable dungeon for Aurelius, and they should be ready to take in the Dark wizards who had committed crimes bad enough that the Ministry  _might_ keep them under guard.  
  
*  
  
"I don't understand what you're talking about."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes as he paced back and forth in front of Shepherd, studying the stones in the walls. With luck, he could use them as the basis for the cell he was going to place Shepherd in. He hoped he could, since he had never tried to create a spell like this without the benefit of a physical base. Even Lucius's blue cube had the bars backing it up. "That's not an uncommon experience for you, is it?"  
  
"Yes, I suppose I'm stupid."  
  
Harry sighed and glanced over his shoulder at Shepherd. He sat with his head dangling down towards his chest, and his knees hunched up in an absurd position, and his hands clenched in front of him. Now and then he sniffled.  
  
He was so  _weak._ That was the problem. He was sorry now for having gone against Draco and tried to kill Harry, but only because he had got caught. If they let him go, he would become a weapon in the hands of whoever cared to pick him up, and if he went to Azkaban, then he might hate that so much he would agree to go with whoever tried to break him out.  
  
"I don't know how the Malfoy line produced someone like you, I really don't," Harry muttered, and turned back to his task. Even Lucius after years in Azkaban had had more grace and strength than Shepherd did after a relatively short time spent under a confinement that he had to have known was coming.  
  
"I don't, either."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, and reminded himself not to talk to Shepherd anymore. It only made Harry exasperated, and even his agreement couldn't satisfy.  
  
Harry finally stepped back and closed his eyes, beginning to weave the cell. It was made of blue light, like the wall that enclosed Lucius, and it had the same strengths as the wards, borrowing from them where they were closest to the wall of the dungeons. The only one who could pass through it was someone who was a Malfoy either by marriage or by blood. That way, Harry and Draco were the only ones who could reach Shepherd, or break him out if that became necessary.  
  
Shepherd tried to say something else in the middle of Harry's casting, but Harry didn't listen to him. He was lost in the middle of the blue light now, of the magic that swelled inside him and poured through him.  
  
He  _did_ enjoy that strength, he had to admit, as his wand spun around him in curves and patterns that he never knew outside that initial spellcasting. He could get used to having that power available to him all the time, the way that Draco wanted for him.  
  
But it wouldn't come when it was him and his convenience. He had to have the spur of danger to someone else, and life-threatening danger at that. He had banished the dragon that was attacking the wards the same way.  
  
 _Better to have it when I really need it than never have it._  
  
He breathed out the incantation, and the light made his eyelids glow through with blue from the back. Harry opened his eyes and looked around, then smiled. Yes, he had created an asylum that punched a bit through the walls, making this place a little larger than the cell Shepherd had stayed in so far, but still depended on the stones and wards for strength. In one corner was a small bathroom, and there was a bed, and some shelves with books, and a fireplace that would never have any connection to the Floo network, and a tiny kitchen. There were plenty of Muggles who lived in worse places than this.  
  
Harry turned around. Shepherd had stopped muttering and was looking around the walls with the air of someone who intended to make trouble as soon as he could.  
  
“I suppose it’s  _all right_ ,” he said, stressing the “all right” so much that Harry found himself smiling in spite of all the reasons he had to hate the man.  
  
“You’ll use it, and you’ll stay here, and not attempt to escape?” he asked. In fact, although the wards had an exception for someone who was Malfoy by blood or marriage, only Harry and Draco could both come in and out, but he didn’t see any reason to tell Shepherd that.  
  
Shepherd huffed a little and looked again at the gleaming blue lines of the walls. “You swear that no one can get at me in here?” he asked, his voice lowering as if he found it difficult to comprehend that there was no hanging about in the corridor to listen to him.  
  
“No one can get in except me and Draco,” Harry said. “And the Malfoy house-elves, who will bring you food and drinks, and take away all the old dishes, and clean up after you, and bring new books.”  
  
Shepherd blinked a little. He hadn’t thought of house-elves, obviously, and he sat up and clasped his hands in front of him. “They’ll take care of me like a member of the family?”  
  
“They will.” Harry saw no reason not to promise that. After all, Shepherd  _was_ a member of the family, and while Draco’s hostility to him might make Ossy and Affy dubious, Harry was taking care of him.  
  
Shepherd closed his eyes and sniffled a little. “That was all I ever wanted,” he whispered. “Just a  _little_ bit of the Malfoy life-style, and the way they would live. To have some house-elves, and to have someone attend to my wants, and to have a safe place I could retreat to…”  
  
Harry smoothly stepped back through the walls into the corridor, listening as Shepherd’s voice became muffled by the wards. Then he took a deep breath and faced the corridors that led up to Draco’s rooms—Draco’s wing, really. They had kept their separate bedrooms, although they spent most of their time together now.  
  
Time to go tell him that Shepherd was safely in an impregnable prison, and hope that would give Draco some sense of satisfaction, and the inclination to forgive Harry.  
  
*  
  
“Do you still admire the man you married, Draco?”  
  
Draco grimaced a little. His mother had summoned him and he’d come, but she didn’t have to sound  _like_ that, with the vicious drawl in the back of her voice that made her resemble his Aunt Bellatrix. “Yes,” he said shortly. “We don’t agree about what he should do with his magic, obviously, but we agree about a lot of other things.”  
  
“Like what?” Narcissa leaned back in her bed and played with the blankets on her lap, her eyes never wavering from his face.  
  
Draco stood up and prowled around in a circle. Normally he would never show such agitation to his mother, but she knew what he felt about this and her constantly picking at his love for Harry already.   
  
“Like what should happen with Father,” he said, staring out the window and not seeing why he should turn around even when his mother took in a loud, exasperated breath behind him.  
  
“I wanted your father back,” she said. “He has served enough time in prison. He would be a comfort to me in my time of trial. That is the only reason I asked, and you know it, Draco.”  
  
Draco turned around and looked at her, resting his elbows against the glass windowpane. “I think you asked because you intended it to be a test for Harry,” he said. “A test that he wouldn’t pass, because of course he couldn’t free Father from prison without setting off a huge legal scandal. And then you could point to that and claim that he didn’t love me enough, and didn’t want to be a part of this family enough.”  
  
His mother regarded him distantly, in the way she often had during the war. “If you believe that, then of course nothing I can say will convince you otherwise, Draco.”  
  
“And that’s the other thing you do that exasperates me,” Draco said, crashing straight ahead. He had held back on saying all this because he didn’t want to upset his mother, but she had recovered enough that Healer Bowman no longer thought she should be under constant observation. So he would say it. “You manage to make it sound as though you’re the reasonable one, and all the complaints I have about the way you treat Harry don’t matter.”  
  
“If you don’t sound reasonable to yourself,” said his mother, with a slight shake of her head, “then perhaps you are not.  _You_ are the most sympathetic audience you could imagine.”  
  
“There’s one other person.”  
  
His mother stiffened as Harry pushed open the door and stepped into her bedroom. He gave Narcissa one mild look, and then turned and smiled at Draco. “Can anyone join in this conversation, or is it a private affair?”  
  
“Nothing I think and do is private from you,” Draco said, smiling at him, partially because it was true, or he wanted it to be true, and partially because he could feel the repulsion radiating out from his mother.  
  
“Good.” Harry turned and studied Narcissa for a moment. Then he said, “I do still feel guilty about what I did to you, but that doesn’t mean you can use the guilt into manipulating me to do anything you want me to. Your husband has been mistreated in prison, that’s true. But I used the Blue Asylum Spell to put up a shield that will keep him safe.”  
  
Narcissa’s hands knotted in the blankets. Draco winced a little. He could imagine the kind of retort that was coming, the sharp, poisoned words that Harry would have no shield or defense against.  
  
Then he looked at Harry’s face again, and hesitated. Harry was waiting, patient, but without the coldness he had shown the first time he and Narcissa argued about freeing Lucius from prison. His hands were lightly knotted in front of him instead, and he had an expression Draco remembered his father wearing when he had to get through boring meetings.   
  
“You have no idea what it would mean to me, to have my husband free,” Narcissa began, voice soft.  
  
“I think I do,” Harry said. “It would mean the same thing to you that having Draco free would mean to me, if he had spent a long time in prison.” He turned and smiled at Draco, and Draco found himself reeling in the face of that smile. Harry reached out and took his hand. “But it would all depend on what he had done.”  
  
“You can condemn your husband to prison, then?” Draco had never heard his mother sound that way, shrill and yet broken, like a shattered window. “Draco, are you  _listening_ to this? To the way that your Gryffindor husband places principle above a sense of loyalty to his family?”  
  
“I’m listening,” Draco said, reaching out and taking Harry’s hands. “And he’s right, it would depend on the reason that I was in prison. If the Ministry had arrested me on some spurious charge and rushed the trial through because they wanted to get their hands on Malfoy property and money?”  
  
“They would never be able to get even that far unless they’d already knocked me unconscious and immobilized somewhere,” Harry said easily. “Especially since I’m your heir, and they would have to get rid of me, too.”  
  
Draco rubbed Harry’s knuckles with his thumb. That showed Harry  _had_ paid attention to the lessons Draco had tried to teach him about pure-blood property and inheritance laws.  
  
Harry smiled back at him, and Draco would have liked to drag him into another room and continue the fantasies that had sprung into his mind. But his mother was there, watching, and there was another question to answer. “What if I had committed murder?” Draco asked. “Or become a Death Eater like my father?”  
  
“Then I would have to look into the evidence,” Harry said quietly. “But if you really had committed murder, then I would visit you in prison, and make sure that no one mistreated you simply for being there. And I would make Teddy Lupin my heir, and make sure that he grew up knowing as much about his grandmother’s family as he does about his father’s.”  
  
Draco turned to his mother. She was watching them with a peculiar expression, her brows set and drawn down. It looked different on her pale, age-spotted face than it would if she was her normal age, but Draco thought he knew it anyway: the expression she wore when Draco used his first bit of accidental magic, or first said that he wasn’t going to sit down and do what his parents told him.  
  
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Draco told her quietly. “I don’t want to hate you. But I am going to have the husband I want, and Father is going to be safe—but he isn’t going to leave prison.”  
  
“If it was Draco,” Narcissa said, speaking straight to Harry now, “you would find a way to do it.”  
  
“It would depend on what he’d done,” Harry said, “which you should have learned by just listening to us. But there’s also a difference between someone who committed a few crimes during the last war and someone who committed crimes during both wars. He’s going to stay there, Mrs. Malfoy. But you can visit him when you feel better, and I’ve made sure that no one can poison or curse him.”  
  
He turned to Draco. “I’ve done the same for your cousin. Now, we should take the wizards who tortured him to the Ministry, and hope that draining someone’s magic is a crime bad enough for them to hold them.”  
  
“I’m certain it will be,” Draco said, and turned to his mother.  _Do you still think I should have chosen a different husband?_ He let his eyes ask the question for him, because he knew that it would hurt both Harry and his mother, for different reasons, to hear it spoken aloud.  
  
His mother turned her head away and said nothing. Draco left the room with Harry, hand in hand.  
  
It might take her time to become reconciled to Harry’s presence in the house, but he thought they had made a fine beginning.


	42. Descent on the Ministry

“We have rights, too.”  
  
Draco had to smile at the way Harry hit the protesting men, two of the wizards who had accompanied Aurelius to the Manor, with Stunners. They had time for one protest, and then they sagged to the floor and landed with their heads drooping. They would have landed harder, but Draco cast a few charms that made their robes float out around them and hold them up. He thought Harry might appreciate it if they didn’t break their heads open and make the Ministry think they’d been beating up helpless prisoners.  
  
Harry straightened up and smiled at him. And Draco swallowed in the face of that, and glanced away.  
  
“I love you,” Harry said, voice as soft as though he was whispering prayers to himself in the privacy of his room.  
  
Draco turned and stretched out his hands, because he had to. Harry met him halfway, and they stood there kissing among the group of several Stunned Dark wizards.  
  
Draco moved back at last and shook his head at Harry when he tried to follow. “Remember,” he murmured. “We’ve got to get these blokes to the Ministry and make a presentation convincing enough that we  _know_ that they’re going to keep them under guard, even though we don’t have Aurelius to produce testimony for them.”  
  
Harry grinned again, his eyes as brilliant as miniature suns, and his cheeks not far behind. “Don’t worry. When I’m feeling sufficiently inspired, I can change minds so fast you wouldn’t believe it was me.” He bent down and began conjuring stretchers that would carry the Stunned men. Draco supposed it was a gesture to make them look better in the eyes of the public. It couldn’t hurt to show up being so kind to their supposed enemies that their other enemies would support and defend them, Draco reckoned.  
  
Harry stood up with a collection of floating stretchers behind him, and nodded. “I would usually do this in Auror robes, but I don’t need them now.” He closed his eyes and pressed his hand against his heart.  
  
“You’ve done something like this before?” Draco blinked at the stretchers, and wondered how he had missed hearing about it.  
  
“With prisoners whose money might be sufficient to get them out of Azkaban,” Harry murmured, eyes still closed. Then he opened one and fixed Draco with a sharp look. “Usually prisoners from the sort of pure-blood family I’ve married into, now.”  
  
“Then I’m glad the experience will stand you in good stead,” Draco said calmly, and just looked back. He couldn’t help what his father had done in the past, or the reputation his family had had before the war. Nor did he think Harry would really expect him to. What he would have taken as insults a while ago, he thought, was now just the way that Harry related to the world.  
  
Harry shut his eyes, nodded, and said, “Good. Now be quiet, while I work myself up into Threatening Auror Harry Potter. Without Auror robes, this time.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows, and stood in silence while Harry took a couple of deep breaths. He supposed that just as Harry had to think hard to come up with a good enough reason to use his magic when he was the one being threatened, he had to do the same when he was acting for a mostly personal cause.  
  
“What’s your inspiration?” he asked, when Harry opened his eyes and moved purposefully towards the door of the dungeon cell. Draco had to get out of his way to avoid being knocked over by the stretchers floating behind him. “The thought of what Aurelius suffered?”  
  
“No,” Harry said, and smiled over his shoulder at him. “The thought of what  _you_ did.”  
  
Draco was quiet as he followed Harry. He wanted to speak, but there was no word deep enough for what Harry had just revealed.  
  
*  
  
 _Remember. You might as well swagger, not be modest. They never believed in your modesty anyway._  
  
They Flooed out into the middle of the Ministry Atrium, and Harry set himself to march straight ahead, ignoring the gapes and glances that followed him. Nobody tried to stop him, which was as it should be. They probably didn’t want to get involved, after his last performance in the middle of the Ministry, except from a safe distance.  
  
He reached the lifts, and wondered for a moment what he should do. Then he shook his head, snorted, and cast a spell that would compel all of the lifts to return to the Atrium.   
  
He heard startled cries and outraged shouts, but ignored them. There were plenty of people who would be outraged for all sorts of reasons in just a few minutes. If they started a little ahead of time, that was no concern of his.  
  
He heard a sharp clanging of metal, a brisk buzz of magic, and the sounds of the lifts settling into place before the doors opened. Harry stepped into the nearest with two of the stretchers bunching in behind him, and directed the rest of the stretchers into the rest of the lifts. Draco scrambled to catch up with him, and Harry moved one of the stretchers with him into a nearby lift so Draco could stand comfortably.  
  
If he  _could,_ that was. Draco was bent almost double, his hand clamped across his mouth, hysterical little giggles breaking free anyway. Harry touched him on the shoulder, and Draco straightened up and shook his head at him, hiccupping a bit.  
  
“I didn’t know that you could look like that,” Draco said finally. They were almost at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and he faced Harry with his eyes dancing and his mouth still quivering. Harry firmly bit his own lip and reminded himself that kissing Draco in public was not the best idea, if only because it might mean someone else would want to join in. “You didn’t care at  _all_ that some people were staring.”  
  
“Was something I did laughable?” Harry hadn’t thought so, but then, he tended to be a terrible judge of the way that other people reacted to him.  
  
Draco shook his head hard enough that his hair rustled around his ears. “No. That’s the  _point_. You looked so cool, and comfortable, and they didn’t have the slightest clue what to do.” He reached out and squeezed Harry’s wrist. “Try to look more like that in the future. That’s what a proper Malfoy does: not give a shit about any of the forces they’re trying to make him acknowledge.”  
  
The lift door opened before Harry could retort with his own opinions of what a proper Malfoy did and did not do. Then they were stepping out onto the floor that contained the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Harry had to smile and nod. And then keep walking straight ahead, as the other lifts all arrived at the same time and the fleet of stretchers floated into the corridor behind him, darting here and there to get around the people waiting for the lifts like huge butterflies around flowers.  
  
Seen that way, Harry supposed it  _was_ kind of comic. But he tried to strangle his own mirth, because this really wasn’t the time for it.  
  
The Aurors around him all turned their heads and stared at him in stone-stricken silence. Harry wondered idly whether they were thinking about the last time they had confronted him and what had happened, or whether the stretchers confused them.  
  
 _Or whether they think that it’s my latest group of enemies occupying those stretchers._  
  
Harry smiled at that, but wiped the smile from his face when he saw the Head Auror’s office door ahead. Yes, that would have to be his destination. He drew himself up austerely as they neared the door—prompting another burst of giggles from Draco, although Harry thought he was the only one who really noticed them—and knocked sharply on it.  
  
There was a long silence from inside. Harry knew someone was there, but he was beginning to believe it might not be the Head Auror. The door would have flown open already if that was the case.  
  
Then a voice he knew from his last assault on the Ministry said, “Yes? Come in.”  
  
Harry was smiling as he opened the door, because that voice belonged to Eliot, and it was  _something_ to appear before her with a bevy of prisoners that he had helped to capture even though he was no longer officially an Auror. Better than some Aurors managed in weeks or months of working on cases, certainly.  
  
Eliot turned to face him, and stared. There was another woman with her, her partner, and they seemed to have been waiting for the Head Auror to come back from wherever he had gone. Harry nodded smartly to her and flipped off a salute, which made Eliot’s partner wince a little.  _She_ could recognize sarcasm, whatever Harry had to say for Eliot.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Eliot put one hand on her wand and one hand on her hip. “I thought you were resigning from the Aurors and the Ministry?”  
  
“Can’t a normal citizen still report the presence of dangerous criminals on his property?” Harry asked, widening his eyes. “Particularly dangerous criminals who were trying to drain someone else’s magic and absorb it?”  
  
Eliot’s partner turned to face him. “Who were they working for?” she asked. “And whose magic did they try to drain?”  
  
“A man named Aurelius Shepherd,” Harry said, glad for once that the man’s name wasn’t Malfoy. There were people who would figure out the connection, especially after the last speech he had made in the Atrium right before he quit, but it would get the case taken more seriously at first than it would have if he had come in claiming damages for a Malfoy. “Working for someone that they named as Brian Sontage.”  
  
Eliot hissed. “We’ve been trying to get some evidence that leads back to him for  _years_ ,” she said, and her fingers curled and uncurled around her wand. “Why did you manage to do it?”  
  
“Because, even retired, he’s a better Auror than you,” Draco said from behind Harry, in a voice of simple confusion. “You mean you didn’t  _understand_ that?”  
  
Harry nudged Draco sharply with his elbow. “Shepherd pleaded guilty to some of the things he’d tried to do to me and my husband in exchange for having his enemies handled,” he said. “He was the one who put us onto Sontage’s track. But you’re the one who will have the pleasure of actually conducting the arrest and pursuing the case, so I don’t see why you’re upset.” He waved his wand, and long ropes sprang out from the stretchers, wrapping around the legs of the Head Auror’s desk to tether them there. “Have fun.”  
  
He started to turn away, aware that Eliot’s partner was staring at him in some respect, and Draco was standing close behind his back with arms folded and head bowed against the giggles that wanted to flood his throat. It was a good day.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
That was Eliot, and Harry sighed and turned back around. It had been fun confronting her with evidence that he was still a competent and effective Auror, but she was irritating enough that he didn’t want to spend a lot of time around her, either. “What?”  
  
“Where did you get the evidence?” Eliot gestured at the wizards on the stretchers. “Why did you Stun them and bring them here like this? Did they  _really_ attack you, or did you make that a convenient excuse for bringing them here?”  
  
Harry’s hands tightened in front of him. Draco leaned against his back. Harry hissed between his teeth and straightened up. That reminded him, whether Draco was trying to calm him down or giving him support in the face of Eliot’s accusations. He was here for more than just himself. He  _represented_ more than just himself. He was here to drop off his family’s enemies and get them safely held in Azkaban, and while Eliot might not want to do that, he had a feeling her partner would.  
  
“Yes, I made up that story that you could easily prove false and accused them of a monstrous crime because I wanted to get random men whose names I don’t even know in trouble,” Harry snapped. “Perhaps you could put aside your suspicions for  _one_ moment and consider that I might be telling the truth?”  
  
Eliot blinked. Maybe the blunt words had got through to her. And Harry didn’t think it would matter if they hadn’t. Her partner would take his word for it and ensure that things got done.   
  
“I only wanted to know how you stumbled across so many people who were foolish enough to let you capture them,” Eliot said, and made a gesture that Harry might have interpreted as a peace offering if he was stupid.   
  
“It’s not as though he lost all his skills and abilities the minute he retired,” Draco said, his voice rigid as ice. “Why would you think that?”  
  
Eliot’s partner and Harry exchanged a glance before Harry thought about it. He might not have much in common with the Aurors anymore, but it was still true that he didn’t want to change a private quarrel into something the Ministry would be obliged to take notice of. She nodded a little at him, and Harry moved forwards and took Draco’s arm.  
  
“I think we should leave now,” Harry told him, quietly but firmly.  
  
Draco shook his elbow a little, his gaze still fixed on Eliot. Harry tightened his grip, and Draco turned and stared at him.   
  
“Sometimes I don’t understand you at  _all_ ,” he said, and his voice seemed to vibrate in the back of his throat. “Don’t you  _care_ about things like this?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, because it seemed he had to. “I still do, but I did what you urged me to do and tried to put the Ministry behind me because serving and saving our family is more important.” He saw the way Draco’s eyes softened at the reference to their family, and smiled back, giving Draco’s arm a little shake and looking pointedly towards the office door again. “I think we should leave.”  
  
“Part of you will always regret leaving the Ministry,” said Eliot, in dark tones that she probably imagined made her sound like a seer. “Part of you knows that you can never find what you  _really_ want to do anywhere else.”  
  
“Maybe that impresses some people, but not us,” Draco told her, and then, to Harry’s relief, he did walk out of the office and back into the corridor. Harry offered an apologetic little grimace to Eliot’s partner and moved after him. He did sort of regret having to close the door behind him. He would have liked to hear what he was sure she would say to Eliot.  
  
“Ready to leave?” Harry asked Draco, raising his eyebrows a little when Draco shuffled his feet.  
  
Draco sighed. “It’s  _infuriating._ ”  
  
Harry leaned in to kiss him, not caring who saw. Draco’s hands came up and gripped his elbows in a grasp far different from the one Harry had used on him earlier in the office. Harry moaned into his mouth, and then pulled away with an effort and used his chin to point the way towards the lifts.  
  
“We should go,” he whispered. “Before we do something that you can’t finish here.”  
  
“Who says I wouldn’t finish it?” Draco asked, and seemed delighted with the slightly scandalized look on Harry’s face. He strolled towards the lifts, hands in his pockets and hum vibrating loudly enough in his throat to make it sound as if it was bouncing off the walls. Harry closed his eyes, laughed a little, and followed him.  
  
*  
  
“I want something from you.”  
  
Harry turned and smiled at him. They had come back from the Ministry an hour ago, and since then, Harry had been in the library studying a pure-blood book that Draco thought was one of those he’d assigned to Harry all those weeks ago. Draco had practiced pointing the basilisk wand at various places in the room, Summoning books, lighting a fire and then extinguishing it again, casting household charms. He wanted to make sure that the wand could perform the most basic, everyday spells as well as more important magic.   
  
“What do you want?” Harry asked, and set the book aside, leaning forwards to fix his eyes on Draco.  
  
Draco wondered for a moment why no one had married Harry before this. Surely he couldn’t be the  _only_ one who found those green eyes so intoxicating when they were fixed on him. Surely he wasn’t the only one who felt sometimes as if he would kill for that attention.  
  
But perhaps no one else had received this level of care from Harry, at that. After all, Draco liked to think Harry was more intimate with him than he’d ever been even with his best friends.   
  
With that in mind, Draco felt free to sniff a little and say, “I want us to spend a normal evening together.”  
  
Harry blinked. “I was under the impression that this was a normal evening for us. Or might be, if we’d ever had one that didn’t collapse into needing to defend ourselves against former friends and new enemies.”  
  
Draco licked his lips. He knew what he wanted to say, or he had, until Harry phrased his objection like that. But he would go ahead with the words. At least he now trusted that Harry would never betray him by laughing at his weakness or gossiping about it with his friends.  
  
“Not your reading that kind of book,” he said, standing up and moving across the room to Harry, holding out his hand to take his wrist. Harry let him do it, and didn’t even try to retain the place he had been marking with his finger in his book. Draco kissed the back of Harry’s fingers and spread them out so that he could tease with his own fingernail at the webs between them. “But you coming with me and eating dinner and talking. That was the kind of thing I meant. A normal evening, the kind other couples share.”  
  
Harry’s smile could have turned night to day. “I’d love to.”  
  
*  
  
Ossy was standing with his arms folded when they made their way into the dining room. Harry paused and eyed him, wondering if he had forgotten to conduct some rite in propitiation of house-elves, or if Draco had. Ossy’s ears were standing up and practically quivering, or at least the hairs that edged them were.  
  
“Master Harry and Master Draco Malfoy is sitting down to dinner,” Ossy announced, staring into the distance, past them rather than at their faces. “They are eating  _their entire meal._ They are  _being eating._ They are being eating  _dessert_.” He swung around and stared up at Harry, his nose so high that Harry could make out more about house-elf nostrils than he had ever wanted to know. “There is  _being nothing interrupting them._ ”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to defend them, but Draco caught his hand and eye at the same time, and shook his head. Harry nodded back in understanding. It looked like they weren’t the only people in the house who wanted a normal evening.  
  
When he sat down in the seat beside Draco, instead of across the table from him, Ossy nodded stiffly and then clapped his hands. The plates began to appear on the table. Harry blinked at the glistening mounds of fruit and scones and cakes and potatoes and fish and chicken and something that he sincerely  _hoped_ wasn’t the entire roast boar with an apple in its mouth that it looked like. “We can’t eat all this,” he began.  
  
Ossy turned around and stared at him so fiercely that Harry winced a little.  
  
“Um. We’ll manage, somehow,” Harry said, and began reaching for his fork and spoon, while Ossy coated the end of the table with enormous platters of pies and chocolates and glasses of fizzy drinks.   
  
Draco caught his wrist again. Harry met his eyes, truly afraid of what he would say about house-elves and the rites needed to propitiate them.  
  
“Let me feed you,” Draco whispered. “It’s something that pure-blood spouses do, and when the demi-marriages were closer, it’s something they would do on the first night. We didn’t get to do that.” He tightened his grip and shook his head when Harry opened his mouth. “No. I don’t blame anyone for that. I don’t—want to blame anyone right now. But I would very much like to feed you. Can I?”  
  
Harry swallowed and nodded. “Although will Ossy let you? Or will he murder you for not eating yourself?”  
  
A smile passed over Draco’s face that made Harry’s throat dry and seem to close. Draco leaned back, almost lounging, and picked up his fork. “We’ll alternate bites, how about that?” he murmured.   
  
Harry had never known what people meant when they talked about someone’s voice being sex. Now he did. He opened his mouth, feeling hypnotized by the way that Draco dipped his fork into the whole roast chicken in front of him and unfailingly pulled loose a tender, spicy morsel of meat.  
  
True to his word, Draco fed him and then fed himself, one bite at a time, with a care and a gentleness that Harry swallowed just as much as he did the food. Draco’s eyes blazed, and the dinner was long and slow, and Ossy gave them two full plates for every empty or bone-covered one that he took away.  
  
Harry kept opening his mouth. He didn’t feel hunger often, probably a consequence of the way he’d grown up, but this,  _this_ , made him burn and shift in his seat. Draco noted the way he did, and his face warmed and shone. Harry wanted to flinch, sometimes, but then he didn’t, because Draco would be bringing the next forkful up, and he couldn’t move his head without being poked in the eye.  
  
And Draco was there, and the food, and the steady, growing fire that affected  _both_ of them, if the way Harry saw Draco reach down to adjust himself was any indication.  
  
And then, finally, Harry knew he would vomit if he ate something else, and he leaned back and shook his head. Ossy appeared beside his chair. Harry turned his head slowly, in dread, because there was no way that he could eat more, but he suspected Ossy would insist that he try.  
  
To his relief, Ossy examined him, and nodded a little. Harry sighed and pushed his chair back.  
  
But Draco caught his hand before he could go far. Harry looked at him, and saw Draco’s smile deepen and shine, his eyes glowing with flames that didn’t come from any reflections of the candles around them.  
  
“Finally,” he whispered, his voice so thick that Harry moved forwards without thinking, and around the table, and into Draco’s arms.  
  
They had a time getting up the stairs, so closely were they entwined.


	43. An Evening In

Harry laughed as they reached the top of the stairs and nearly fell over. He managed to step back from Draco, put his hands on his shoulders, and smile at him. “I think that we should decide where we’re going and then go together,” he said, a little shocked to hear how deep his own voice was. “Instead of kissing our way there.”  
  
Draco lifted his head and exhaled hard. Then he nodded. “As long as it means we end up on a bed with me inside you, then I think that’s a good idea,” he muttered.  
  
Harry swallowed, feeling himself thicken and harden, throb and swell. He reached out and picked up Draco’s hands, rubbing his thumbs back and forth over the knuckles. “Come on, then,” he said, and guided them both to his own bedroom, since it was the closer one.  
  
He got the door open, and then Draco shut it again, with the way he slammed Harry back against it. He was kissing Harry’s neck and groaning into his mouth. Harry kissed him back, running his hands through Draco’s hair. Draco pulled away and shook himself so that his hair settled back into place.  
  
“What do you want to do?” he whispered. Harry opened his mouth to protest that everything would be good for him and Draco should choose, but Draco seemed to read his mind with a kind of painless Legilimency. He reached out, put his hand on Harry’s arm, and pinched a little bit.  
  
“I want you to choose,” he whispered. “I know what I said about being inside you, but—whatever you want, first, before that.”  
  
Harry smiled and knelt down where he was. Draco looked bewildered for all of a half-second before Harry began undoing his trousers. Then he gasped and went on holding his breath until Harry had his erection out and was smoothing it back and forth between taut fingers.  
  
“You don’t really want to?” Draco whispered, as though he was breathless.  
  
“I think I  _know_ what I  _want_ ,” Harry said, and curled his tongue and lips around Draco before Draco could make another stupid assumption.   
  
Draco’s taste was sharp and salty. If there was anything else there, anything that came from the meal they’d eaten, Harry couldn’t taste it yet. He swallowed and sipped and sucked and hummed, then choked a little as Draco forgot himself and thrust deeply.   
  
“Sorry,” Draco mumbled at him, and stumbled back, aiming for the bed. Harry stood up and pursued him, smiling as Draco caught his eye and blushed. Draco’s whole body turned that dusty pink color, at least if the skin Harry could see through the gap in his trousers was any indication. Harry hadn’t known that.  
  
He felt a little drunk as he steered Draco onto the bed, knelt between his legs and kissed him again. Draco’s trousers and shoes still clung to him, and the cloth scraped against Harry’s chest as he dropped back to take Draco in. Not to mention, he was still fully dressed himself, and they would probably look weird to anyone who came in.  
  
But no one would come in. That was the wondrous part of it. They were free to do as they wished, and Draco rolled his hips and groaned once in the back of his throat as though he had just thought that himself and the idea satisfied him immensely.  
  
Harry closed his eyes so he could concentrate more on the taste riding his tongue. Draco writhed and skidded around at one point, though, and Harry’s eyes snapped open. Draco was tugging off his shirt. He shook his head when Harry looked at him.  
  
“Don’t stop,” he whispered, and tugged at the shirt again, hard enough that he winced as his arm caught in one sleeve. “I’m just—I have to—it’s so  _hot_ in here.”  
  
Harry chuckled around Draco, which, from the suggestive arch and thrust of his hips, Draco appreciated. Then he closed his eyes and went back to lapping and licking again. He was going slower now, because he wanted to see what it tasted like that way, and Draco’s hands were flapping and grabbing at nothing. Once or twice they found a grasp on Harry’s hair or shoulders, but then slipped off again.  
  
Draco was losing control of his mouth, too, and he babbled nonsense that Harry listened to tolerantly as he continued to suck him. “Harry, I—I promise—I won’t—I love you—this is so good—let me do you—”  
  
That last was the only part Harry didn’t like, because he intended to let Draco do him, but only after he had thoroughly done for Draco. He leaned in until his lips brushed the hair at Draco’s groin and sucked again.  
  
That did it. Draco froze, his mouth stretched open as though he was letting through some words that were too wide to pass otherwise, and then came down Harry’s throat. Harry relaxed some more and managed to swallow.  
  
It was a sharper and saltier taste than he had expected it to be. But that wasn’t much of a surprise considering what Draco had tasted like the rest of the time he had been doing this. So he licked his lips only a little afterwards, and crawled up to begin taking off Draco’s trousers from the hips down. Of course, that meant he had to stop and get his shoes off, and Draco moaned and opened his eyes as he was doing that.  
  
“You’re really good,” he whispered.  
  
Harry could imagine a time when being praised for his skills in bed would either make him stammer in denial or embarrass him horribly. Now, he had to grin. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t exactly have a lot of practice, but loving someone and wanting to make them happy is a good substitute.”  
  
Draco nodded and suddenly pulled hard, so that Harry fell across his chest. Harry grunted in some discomfort and started wriggling to get away, but Draco put a hand in the middle of his back and stilled him without much effort. His eyes were locked on Harry’s and shining, enthralled.  
  
“What?” Harry whispered back, because Draco looked as though he was going to speak some mystical revelation.  
  
“I want to kiss you,” Draco whispered, and leaned up, and did that.  
  
His mouth was more engulfing than Harry had expected, deeper than it had felt on the stairs, and Harry did fall, sprawling across him, his arms losing the ability to balance him. God, it was so good, the way that Draco kissed, the way he touched Harry, his hands in his hair, and his tongue licking in deeper and deeper, until Harry felt as if he had a mouth like Draco’s, and the whole world became the two of them, kissing.  
  
He laughed into Draco’s mouth, and Draco pulled back and eyed him with some amusement. “Laughing at me?” he asked, reaching down and pulling on himself a little.   
  
“No,” Harry said. “Laughing because I’m happy.”  
  
For some reason, that made Draco’s eyes glow like comets, and then he was kissing Harry again and undressing him as he rolled him onto his stomach, and Harry laughed again until the silky slide of the sheets against him made him forget about the laughter and remember how hard he was. He arched his own back, and Draco put a hand on the small of it and rubbed up and down, slowly, as though he was thinking about something else.  
  
Harry laid his head on the pillow and snorted a little. “You’d  _better_ be thinking about me,” he said, when Draco went on touching him, in the absent sort of way that he might pet a cat.  
  
“I was trying to remember the incantation that would let me fuck you,” Draco said. “I meant what I said.”  
  
Harry leaned his head back into the pillow and lay there with his eyes closed until he heard Draco murmur something that sounded happy and then a spell. A moment later, Draco was sliding his cock along Harry’s hip, so slick and wet and hot that Harry humped into the bed.  
  
“No need to do that,” Draco said, and took him by the arse as he finally pulled the last of Harry’s clothes off. “I’ll satisfy you soon enough.”  
  
“A lot of talk and magic and not a lot of  _touching_ so far,” Harry said. Then he gasped as Draco pried him roughly apart and reached in with fingers that he must have lubed when Harry wasn’t listening—or did the spell that had got him hard again do that, too?—to make him twitch and gasp and thrash.  
  
“You were saying?” Draco asked, in a soft voice that sounded almost elegant, almost uninterested.   
  
“Fuck you,” Harry muttered, and Draco laughed with so much meaning in his voice, dark meaning that made Harry clench down on his fingers, until Draco pulled them out and said something Harry couldn’t hear over the pounding in his ears.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re more than ready,” Draco said, and eased forwards, into him.  
  
Harry had felt this before, but it seemed to go deeper this time, the same way their kisses in the bed had. He swallowed and relaxed, because he wouldn’t let himself do anything else, and once again there came a moment when the burning vanished into pleasure. He clutched at the sheets and hissed.  
  
“I wish I could hear you praising me in Parseltongue,” Draco whispered as he thrust, and Harry went sliding up the bed until Draco cast another spell, one that made the sheets rise up and grasp his hips to hold him in place. “I wish it was just like this, here, all the time, and me always riding you like this, and you always taking this…”  
  
Harry thought he said something back, but he really couldn’t remember afterwards. His mind was a deepening spiral of black and purple pleasure, and he put his head down and pushed his way through the next few thrusts, striving, reaching for the goal he could feel waiting just beyond him.  
  
Draco prolonged it, though, pulling back when Harry tried to impale himself, and murmuring how Harry was so  _impatient_ , and he had to  _wait,_ and nearly making Harry remember why he had hated Draco when they were children. But then he gave in, maybe to his own need more than Harry’s whimpers, and shoved inwards again. Harry reared up on his fingers and toes, crying out.  
  
“There, there, yes,” Draco said, and made it into a chant as he went back to thrusting and pushing.  
  
And then they had both reached that place, and Harry rose up like a bird and came down like a weary-winged bird, and he shuddered all over with the consuming nature of it, the way Draco was inside him and down him and around him.  
  
Particularly when Draco leaned over and grabbed Harry’s shoulders as he panted out his own orgasm against Harry’s neck, it was intoxicating.  
  
Harry lay there with his eyes closed when that was done, and Draco stroked his shoulders and back and said something long and low and sweet. Harry didn’t even try to listen to the words. That wasn’t what he was interested in, just the tone, the way that Draco seemed interested in just holding and touching him.  
  
And then he was asleep, and he never knew if Draco had fallen asleep in the same position or not.  
  
*  
  
“Mistress Narcissa is expecting Master Draco.”  
  
Draco blinked his eyes open and turned his head. He had had a house-elf wake him in a potentially embarrassing situation more than once, but he had to admit, never one as embarrassing as this one. He was still inside Harry, and pulled out with a long groan and a sticky feeling.  
  
Ossy continued to look at the wall, and repeated, “Mistress Narcissa is expecting Master Draco.”  
  
“She probably knows exactly what we were doing, and wanted to make sure that I don’t spend any more time than  _necessary_ with Harry,” Draco muttered, and shook his head as he stood up and began to dress. “That would be like her.”  
  
“Master Draco Malfoy is preferably not being accusing Mistress Narcissa.”  
  
Draco looked at Ossy, who continued to look at the wall. He knew that he could demand that the elf explain that remark. And then he would have to deal with frigid words and maybe the highest heresy of all, burnt meals, for the next week.  
  
Then Draco cast a look at Harry, still sprawled on the bed, and sighed and continued dressing. No, Ossy wouldn’t burn the meals, not now that Draco’s demi-husband ate them with him. Instead, he would choose sweet things that Harry had proved to like and Draco couldn’t abide.  
  
“Mistress Narcissa is expecting—”  
  
“She’s probably been expecting me for at least ten minutes,” Draco snapped at Ossy as he tossed his head back to glare at him. “She can wait a bloody minute.”  
  
“Mistress Narcissa,” Ossy said, exactly as if he were a Muggle recording machine, “is not expecting Master Harry.”  
  
Draco stared again. He wondered if there was something wrong with Ossy this morning, if perhaps a fly had got into the kitchens and contaminated some food he was making, and thus driven him crazy. Ossy continued to stare stolidly straight ahead, and said nothing, and said nothing some more, which finally caused Draco to shake his head and jam his feet into his boots. “I know that,” he muttered.  
  
“But,” Ossy said, with delicate precision, “she is saying nothing about bringing him along.”  
  
Draco took much less time to process that than he had the messages Ossy had passed along to him so far. Then he grinned, and reached out to shake Harry’s hip to bring him awake.  
  
*  
  
Harry concealed his yawn behind his hand, and thought he saw Ossy smile from the side of the room. But then the smile went away, and Harry decided it must have been Ossy grimacing instead. He probably should, when the latest Malfoy heir showed up yawning and with his hair mussed in another Malfoy’s bedroom.  
  
Which wasn’t his  _fault._ Harry had wanted to shower and pat his hair down, at least, so Narcissa couldn’t tell so clearly what they’d been doing, but Draco had hauled him along, insisting that his mother was expecting them.  
  
She had turned away from Harry the minute he entered, which meant at least part of that message was false and Harry would have to speak to his husband about grey lies later, and spoken only to her son. They’d exchanged false pleasantries for long minutes now. Like duelists, Harry thought, warming up with minor curses and hexes before they exploded into the true battle.  
  
He found the idea tedious. He stared at the shelf of books on the wall instead. He would have thought Narcissa’s tastes would run to the dry tomes Draco had given him to read, but she had novels and a book that looked as though it might be history. But a more interesting history than the goblin rebellions Binns had taught them, Harry thought, craning his neck to try and see the title.  
  
“Please tell your demi-husband not to  _peer_ at my possessions, Draco.”  
  
Harry winced as he turned around again. Damn it, he was trying. But it seemed even a simple gesture was wrong.  
  
And he would probably cause Narcissa more tedium if he apologized, because he would do something wrong there, too. He pinched his lips so tightly shut that he winced again a second later, because he’d hurt his mouth.  
  
“I think it’s good of Harry to be interested in our history, Mother,” Draco said, in a milder tone than the one he’d been using a moment ago to discuss someone Harry had never heard of. “It’s his history, too, now.”  
  
Narcissa’s fists doubled up. Harry stared at them for a second. Was it his imagination, or was the skin on them less wrinkled and loose than it had been yesterday?  
  
He lost his desire to keep on looking when Narcissa turned a face that had gone porcelain with fury on him.  
  
“It is not his history,” she hissed, still responding to Draco although this time she seemed to be looking directly at Harry. “It will never be. He did not marry into this family. He did not grow up in it. He did not become part of the pure-blood world by any right except that of _conquest_. And do not talk to me about demi-marriage, Draco,” she added viciously when Draco opened his mouth. “I know that he has that right, as he would phrase it. But that does not make him part of us the way a real marriage would. The way that my marriage to your father did.”  
  
“Isn’t this all about how strong the marriages make the family?” Harry asked. He started a little at the sound of his own voice, which was more distant and uninterested than he had known it would be. Narcissa glared at him, and Draco stared at him, and still Harry went on speaking as though someone else was speaking through him instead, someone who had thought more deeply about this and knew the history. “So let’s look at the results of your marriage and my demi-marriage.”  
  
“You dare to speak to me like that,” whispered Narcissa.  
  
Harry smiled at her. “Yes, I do dare, and not even you sound as if you were really phrasing it as a question,” he said. “So. I married Draco and rescued you from debt. I made sure that Draco had a new wand. I made sure that both of you had protection while you recovered from your coma. I quit my job for him, because the Ministry was too prejudiced against my new family to treat me fairly, and in the meantime I fought and defended the family against enemies, some of which were brought into the picture by someone who was blood-related. Blood loyalty is overrated, I find. I was loyal to Draco and I helped you because of nothing except a demi-marriage that you refuse to call real. If it was a tentative bond, it was one that I chose to honor.”  
  
Narcissa tried to say something, and Harry had the faint impression Draco might have tried as well, but he was in full flight right now, and there was nothing that was going to stop or slow him down.   
  
“Let’s look at your marriage,” Harry said. “You have one child. So you provided the Malfoy family with an heir. That was well done.” His voice was still cold and calm and grey, and he thought he was starting to recognize the mood he was in the middle of. He had felt it before, when he was confronting criminals that he knew were never going to change or repent, and he might as well hit them with the force of all he knew about their crimes. “But only one. And you had a husband who joined the Dark Lord and swore loyalty to him above his family. He endangered his only child. You tried to mitigate that damage by making Snape swear an Unbreakable Vow to protect Draco, but that ended, in turn, by dragging an ally of the family to his own death. You saved my life, and now you speak as though you wish you hadn’t, because it made me unworthy to marry into your family. If my stupid life had ended there, I can hear you thinking, in the Forbidden Forest at the Dark Lord’s feet, then you would never have collapsed, or Draco lost his power or his wand or the wards, because I would never have been able to pull on your life-debts when the Dementor ghosts came.”  
  
Narcissa said a single, stabbing word. Harry didn’t hear what it was. He had turned and walked over to the bookshelf, where he stood looking at the books and speaking, not turning around. He didn’t touch the books, because she didn’t want him to and he wasn’t stupid enough to offend her for no reason. But the words were there when he reached for them, continuous, endless, relentless.  
  
“And now your husband is in prison, and you couldn’t help to lead the family because that was the new head of the family’s job, and then you fell into helplessness and old age when the magic tore your life-force from you.” He could feel the flinch from behind him. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t have to watch the invisible wounds his words had torn in her bleeding, either. He could be kind, in a way, a hard, grey mercy. “That isn’t so bad. That wasn’t your fault. But ever since you woke up, you’ve been hammering and tearing at Draco’s marriage, denigrating what he and I have achieved together, and insisting that he divorce me and marry someone else. That isn’t the way to make the family strong, Narcissa. It isn’t even the way to mitigate the excesses of what you think are a poor marriage and support your son in another way that will build him up. Telling me to my face that you hate me and that you wish I hadn’t married Draco? That’s not subtle evil stepmother. That’s not good politician and cunning diplomatist. That’s simply—” and he turned around and launched the word at her with the polite smile of the politician he’d talked about “— _rude_.”  
  
Narcissa stared at him with her mouth open. Then she snapped it shut, and swallowed. Harry listened to the sound of her swallowing in perfect indifference, and watched with equally indifferent eyes as Narcissa sagged back, tried to speak, and failed.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “I think that’s the word for it.”  
  
Draco came forwards and took his hand. Harry looked into his eyes and saw a mixture of relief and wariness, anger and hope. Harry nodded a little. Well. He would allow Draco time to think about it and decide whether or not Harry’s words had been fair.  
  
Or, no, not fair. That wasn’t the point, was it? They were supposed to think about everything as a source of strength or weakness, whether it would help the family or not. Narcissa hadn’t done that, but Harry would have to, at least in the ways he interacted with Narcissa and Draco.  
  
“You haven’t provided the family with an heir,” Narcissa whispered.  
  
Harry might have laughed, but she was white to the lips and he didn’t want to. “I have someone in mind,” he said. “Someone who’s even blood-related.” He bowed and turned towards the door of the room.  
  
Draco’s hand slipped along his, ending up in a grip on his fingers. Harry looked at him silently. Draco just shook his head a little, opened his mouth, tried to speak, and closed it.  
  
“I know,” Harry said gently. “I won’t ask you to pick a side, because it’s not right. But you might think about the fact that I’ve asked you for certain things, and your mother’s asked you for certain things, and you might or might not be able to serve both of us.”  
  
He raised Draco’s hand to his lips, not caring if his mother saw, and detached Draco’s grasp gently, then went off to be by himself. He was shaken, and drained, and not entirely pleased.  
  
 _But it might have been the only way to make her see reason._  
  
 _Please, let her see reason._


	44. A Kind of Understanding

“Draco.”  
  
His mother’s voice was a little shaken. Draco finally turned around from staring after Harry and looked coolly at her. “Yes?”  
  
Narcissa reached up and smoothed her white hair back, then let her hand drop to the bed again. Now that she had his attention, she licked her lips several times before she continued speaking. “You know that I care for you.”  
  
“I know that,” Draco said, and sighed. He had wanted Harry to speak words that made an impact on his mother, of course he had, but he wasn’t entirely sure that these had made the impact Harry wanted. Among other things, his mother was almost surely incapable of making such a large change right away. She would want to delay it, to pretend that the words referred to something else and the minor points Harry made were the important ones. “Listen, Mother. I know you love me. I know you think you’re doing your best for me in one way, by trying to detach me from Harry and have me marry someone else. But ultimately, that will do more harm than good. That’s what Harry is trying to get across to you, and that’s what I wish you would listen to.”  
  
His mother’s eyes closed, once, in pain. Then she opened them again and said, “Can you tell me your marriage with him has not damaged you?”  
  
Draco had to shake his head. “In what  _way_ , Mother? That’s the essential thing. You tell me I need to let go of him and take some pure-blood wife whom you’ll find for me, but how would that make us stronger? Would she be richer than Harry, or magically stronger than him? Could she bring me the goodwill of his friends?”  
  
“His friends are not the whole of our world.” His mother sat up some more and clasped her hands in front of her the way Draco had sometimes seen her do when she was talking to him about the duties of a Malfoy heir. “And you know that he is more likely to be seen as tarnished for taking our name than you are to be seen as exalted for sharing his bed.”  
  
“Thank you for putting it so succinctly,” Draco said dryly. “But you need to realize, Mother, that I have very little interest in caring what the whole of the wizarding community says about me. And if I tried to divorce him now, then I would be the one who carried the whole extent of the tarnishing that you’re talking about. People would be ready to pity him again as soon as they could, the poor Chosen One, rejected by the husband he thought he could trust, the husband he sacrificed so much for.”  
  
Narcissa’s face looked almost grey. She plucked at the loose skin on her wrists. “Who sacrificed?” she whispered.  
  
“He enforced certain penalties on us, that’s true,” Draco said, as calmly as he could. “But he didn’t mean to. He didn’t  _know_ the life-debts that connected us could be used in that way. I don’t think anyone did.” He paused and gazed at his mother, daring her to deny it.  
  
Narcissa lowered her head and closed her eyes. “No, but we could do so much better than him.”  
  
Draco laughed shortly, in spite of himself. “How? Who? Exactly who would be eager to tie their life to mine now, Mother? We’ve lost the prestige we once had. Maybe that’s a horrible thing, but it’s also the  _truth_. Harry has given us more than anyone else could have, than anyone else would.” He paused, watching her, and decided he had to say something else to stop her from looking so devastated. “Besides, Mother, think about this. There is the strong possibility that I wouldn’t be able to end the demi-marriage now anyway, not without all the scandal and confusion that attends the ending of a real marriage. Demi-marriages are only easily annulled as long as they’re not consummated.”  
  
Narcissa leaned forwards as though struggling, striving, to see beneath his mask, to lock her eyes with his. Draco met her gaze and set his lips in a bloodless smile. No mask here, only the truth, and from the way Narcissa sagged back on the bed and turned her head away from his, she knew it.  
  
“That you could have done something like this,” she whispered. “That you could have chosen to tie your life to someone, a half-blood, who fought against your father and for everything he hated.”  
  
“Still hates, I think,” Draco said, moving towards the door. He was anxious to go and find Harry. He understood if Harry didn’t really want his company right now, but he still wanted to know that he was safe in his loneliness. “Please remember Father is still alive, Mother, in large part thanks to his son-in-law.”  
  
For a moment, his mother’s eyelids fluttered. She looked at him and shook her head. “Alive, but not free. If he could give so much to our family, why not that?”  
  
Draco felt his mouth harden again. “You never expected Harry to set Father free. You only did that because you wanted to set him a test, and you gloried in the failure you thought would follow.” He laid his hand on the door. “Worse than rudeness, isn’t it, what you intended to do to Harry? Worse than not making him welcome in the family. I don’t think he would have been upset if you met him with a little coolness, at first, considering what he had done to you, even if it wasn’t on purpose. But you were  _petty_.”  
  
His mother laid her arm over her eyes. Draco let himself out, and sighed when he stood in the corridor. It hadn’t escaped him that his mother could sit up for a much longer time now, only sagging back against her pillows when Harry’s accusations had cut into her quick. He knew it was a good sign. He told himself she was recovering, that he could stop worrying about her so much now.  
  
But that might mean only that a new object of worry would come along to replace the old one, and this time, it had to be Harry.  
  
Draco turned towards the stairs. He could have summoned Ossy to ask where Harry was, but he preferred to have the little elf tending Narcissa at the moment. Besides, he thought he knew where Harry would be.  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned forwards and peered down the long corridor of flowers that led into the garden proper. His hands were pressed against his forehead, and his skin flared hot against them. He shivered a little, even so. He didn’t think he had a fever, but now reaction was coming back on him, coiling back on him, as he considered how much he might have hurt Draco with his words against Narcissa.  
  
They were all joined together into one family, and no one could escape; that was the hell of it. Harry had accused Narcissa of forgetting that and wanting to dissolve the marriage bond which connected him to Draco too easily, but hadn’t he done the same thing? Hadn’t he forgotten Draco might love both of them and flared out at Narcissa because it was easier to accuse her of being rude than to try and come to some sort of reconciliation with her?  
  
Harry leaned back on the bench and stared up at the sun, the light misty clouds that poured through the blue sky above the garden, and the lighter shimmer of the wards beyond them. He had wanted to be outside with the sun and the sky, but he didn’t feel like flying. And the outdoors wasn’t helping the way he had hoped it would, by giving him something else to think about.  
  
 _I have to learn to get along with her somehow. If she refuses to change her mind, then I’ll have to soften mine, because it’s more important to make the family strong than anything else._ Harry shook his head, a bitter laugh tickling the back of his throat.  _I married Draco partially because privacy behind the wards appealed to me. I should have remembered who would be shut in here with me._  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Harry blinked and glanced up. He had assumed Draco either wouldn’t want to be with him for a while or would want to leave Harry to his privacy. But Draco was standing not far from the stone bench Harry had picked to sit on, watching him with a frown on his face.  
  
“You had  _better_ not be regretting what you did,” Draco said, the snap of a drawn sword in his voice.  
  
Harry blinked, then smiled despite himself. “Since you insist that I shan’t, I shan’t.”  
  
“You were thinking that you’d gone too far, hadn’t you?” Draco sat down on the bench beside him, winding one arm around Harry’s waist. Harry leaned against him. Draco touched Harry’s forehead, as though the dragon scar could tell him something Harry hadn’t, and shook his head. “They were harsh words, but they had to be said. And anyway, I did worse than you. I told her it would be hard to annul the demi-marriage now, if you go by all the laws about marriage in the wizarding world.”  
  
Harry choked a little and stared up at Draco. “Why did you want to do  _that_?”  
  
“Because I bloody love you,” Draco said. “And it’s time she knows it. And maybe this will be the shock that jolts her into accepting that your presence in the Manor, and the  _family,_ is permanent, and you won’t be leaving.” He laid his cheek against Harry’s. “I knew you would probably start feeling sorry for yourself in a minute, and like you forced me to choose between you and my mother. Because it doesn’t matter how often I tell you that you can’t do that, that I’m content with things the way they are, that I love you, you can’t lash out without feeling guilt a few minutes later.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Believe me, I feel no guilt whatsoever about the Ministry and what I said to them before I left.” He hesitated, then laid his hand on Draco’s. “But we do all have to live in the same house, behind the same wards, especially if any more enemies show up to attack us. I do think that I might have been a bit harsh, considering that.”  
  
“Mother certainly never considered it when she said worse things,” Draco said, and closed his eyes, breathing gently into Harry’s ear.  
  
“But she wanted to drive me away,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I never wanted to do the same thing to her.”  
  
Draco tightened his arms, and finally Harry leaned more into him and put his arm around Draco’s waist in return. Draco nodded on top of his head. “I think she’s reconsidering. And you finally made your position clear to her, in terms she can’t ignore. I would rather talk about something else.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry said drowsily. He had forgotten how nice it was to have Draco hold him like this, and he wriggled a little closer, yawning. Draco snorted at him and once again tightened his arms, until he was on the verge of squeezing a breath out of him.  
  
“What did you mean when you said you knew someone who could be my heir?”  
  
“ _Our_ heir,” Harry said, opening his eyes again. “Or even mine, technically, since I would inherit first, remember?”  
  
“Right,” Draco said, and clutched him tighter. “I was unaware that you had any Potter relatives who could be adopted into the family, though.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “It’s my godson, Teddy Lupin. Your cousin,” he added, because Draco’s shoulders had stiffened. “Your aunt’s grandson.”  
  
“Not the one of my aunts who was crazy, I notice,” Draco said. “Because nothing would ever persuade me to adopt one of Aunt Bellatrix’s relatives.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “If she ever had any children, it’s news to me. No, I’ve been Teddy’s godfather since he was born, and since his parents are dead—”  
  
“There won’t be any opposition if we make him our heir?”  
  
Harry half-shut his eyes, because sometimes there was still this overwhelming need to punch Draco. Usually when he acted and reacted as though his assumptions were universal truths. “Not at all,” he said, as calmly and quietly as he could. “Anyway, he would be  _my_ heir, not yours. And his grandmother would object if we had him in the Manor all the time. But I think she would like occasional visits, so that she can have some time to herself.”   
  
“He should spend more time here than that, if he’s going to be a Malfoy,” Draco said, with a sharp tone underlying his voice that Harry thought he understood. Draco was anxious to have it all settled, to have an heir chosen and the fact acknowledged.  
  
“We don’t know that yet,” Harry said, turning to him and forcibly taking his hand so Draco couldn’t wave it around and almost put his eye out. “I came much later in life, and I did okay at becoming a Malfoy. And Andromeda is his legal guardian, anyway. She would be the one who could say whether he would stay here or not.”  
  
Draco spent a few more seconds with his eyes narrowed, then sighed. His eyes widened again as he looked out over the gardens. “And arguments about him having a better life here, with more luxuries, wouldn’t appeal to her,” he muttered. “See, I’m learning the way to argue with Gryffindors.”  
  
“I have no idea if she was a Gryffindor or not,” Harry said. It was true. He hadn’t wanted to ask Andromeda much about the past outside of what she volunteered, since thinking about Tonks and Ted seemed so painful to her. “But yes, she’ll want to make sure that Teddy still spends time with her and the rest of his family. I know she wouldn’t want him to grow up with blood prejudice.”  
  
“Malfoys have married half-bloods before,” Draco said. “Case in point.” He picked up Harry’s hand and played with it.  
  
“You’re not the only one here, though,” Harry said, trying to ignore the sparks that spread from his hand down his arm.  
  
“That’s right,” Draco said, looking inordinately pleased. “You’re here, too. So she shouldn’t have to worry, right?”  
  
“Your mother is here,” Harry said, wondering why he had to point it out when they’d just finished one row with Narcissa. “Your mother who despises Muggleborns and as far as I know has never tried to make it up with her sister. So she’ll be worried about much Narcissa could influence Teddy, I think.”  
  
“Is  _that_ all?” Draco lounged back on the bench. “We’ll make sure to keep him away from her. I mean, he’ll have to meet her sometime, but we won’t leave him alone with her or let her talk to him about blood politics. We  _definitely_ won’t ask her to babysit.”  
  
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “All right. If you think that you can accept having an heir who’s more of Black blood than Malfoy—”  
  
“Malfoy blood isn’t always all it’s meant to be,” Draco interrupted quietly. “You’re more a Malfoy than Aurelius could ever be, and it doesn’t matter who your ancestors were.”  
  
Harry looked at him steadily for a long time, and then nodded. He had been a little afraid that Draco had only relinquished his views about blood prejudice when it came to Harry, since they had to live with each other day in and day out anyway, and Harry had saved his life. But if he could apply the same standard to Teddy, Harry wouldn’t have to worry. “Okay.”  
  
Draco captured his hands and leaned forwards for a kiss. “I’m tired of talking about my mother and heirs,” he whispered. “I think we can find much more pleasant things to talk about.”  
  
And with that, Harry agreed wholeheartedly.  
  
*  
  
“And are you  _sure_ this is what you want?”  
  
Harry lounged back against his chair in Hermione’s kitchen, watching through hazy, half-lidded eyes as she put a sandwich on the table. “What do you mean?”  
  
Hermione sighed and stood up. “I just mean that you seem a lot happier, now, since you quit the Aurors and started living with Malfoy.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “You have the strangest reasons for asking questions that I ever heard of, then. Why wouldn’t I want to stay somewhere where I’m happy, with someone who doesn’t ask all that much of me?”  
  
Hermione turned and glared at him. “But you have no outside job now. No means of fulfillment other than what comes from  _him_.”  
  
“There’s a lot more to do than just lie around in bed all day,” Harry pointed out, purely for the pleasure of watching Hermione’s cheeks turn a dusky red as he picked up the sandwich. “Study pure-blood manners. Try to get along with his mother. We’re talking about having Teddy as my heir, and I’ve talked to Andromeda. And it—went okay.” That was the best he could say for a conversation where Andromeda’s eyelashes had fluttered and she’d stared hard at him, and then asked if he should perhaps be lying down.  
  
At least she wasn’t completely resistant to the idea and hadn’t told Harry never to firecall her again. Harry took some comfort from that. He would lose more than he wanted to admit right now if he could never see Teddy again.  
  
“All of those are things that don’t make you leave the house.” Hermione leaned forwards when Harry just kept eating and watching her. “Well?”  
  
“I have you lot,” Harry said, and Hermione’s face softened with a smile before she seemed to remember she was trying to be stern. She shook her head and sat down across from Harry, sighing a little.   
  
“I just want to make sure that you’re happy,” she whispered. “You’ve given up a lot to be with him.”  
  
“He’s sacrificed some things, too,” Harry pointed out. “One of his friends tried to kill him and another tried to kill me. At least you and Ron and the rest of the Weasleys, too, took it better than that.”  
  
“I know,” Hermione said. “But it’s only been a few days since you quit your job, and in that time you’ve been busy fighting his enemies and figuring out where the threats came from and what you should do about them. So that’s one way to make life exciting. But what happens when that runs out? How are you going to keep from being bored?”  
  
Harry hesitated and traced one finger along the edge of the table. Draco had talked about giving another party, which was fine with Harry, always assuming they could manage to invite enough pure-bloods who weren’t invested in seeing one or the other of them dead.   
  
But he couldn’t spend the rest of his days studying pure-blood customs and holding parties. Draco seemed to understand that, and had told Harry that he could take up whatever else he wanted, as long as it didn’t put his life into too much danger or didn’t invite enemies into their home, either.  
  
“I don’t know yet,” he said quietly.  
  
Hermione reached across the table and put her hand on his. “You should start thinking about it,” she said gently. “I know you like your life right now, but—do you remember what happened a few years ago when you broke your arm on that case you and Ron were working?”  
  
Harry scowled. “Yes.” As far as he was concerned, the simplest means of handling his badly-broken arm would have been to make the bones melt away, the way Lockhart had when Harry got injured on the Quidditch pitch, and then regrow them. For some reason, the Healers at St. Mungo’s had been appalled at that suggestion, and they had insisted that Harry have his arm in a cast for a week until they could be sure that they had all the bone chips together to cast the spells that would reintegrate it. “It was horrible.”  
  
“You were a horrible patient, yes,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes at him. “But what really struck me was that you hated doing nothing, even the kind of nothing where you knew that you could go in and work on paperwork during the day. How content are you going to be to sit around Malfoy’s house all day and do nothing?”  
  
“It’s my house, too,” Harry said, but when she glared at him, he shook his head. “Not content for long. The thing is, now I have time to think about things I want to do  _other_ than hunt Dark wizards. I sort of leapt into being an Auror, you know. McGonagall asked me what I wanted to do during my fifth year when Umbridge was there, and I came up with that. I enjoyed it, but maybe there’s something else I would enjoy.”  
  
“Maybe,” Hermione said, and stared at him.  
  
Harry sighed and applied himself to his food for a while before he said, “You think I was too hasty in quitting the Ministry.”  
  
“I think you were right to do it,” Hermione said. “They didn’t let you fit in, and you deserve a job where you don’t have to watch your back constantly. But I wish you had thought beyond that.”  
  
“Now I have the chance,” Harry said, and squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Hermione. Try not to worry,” he amended, when Hermione just raised her eyebrows at him. “But I have the luxury of time now, and I’m going to  _think_ about it.”  
  
Hermione smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to strain anything.”  
  
“Yes, right,” Harry said, and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth in retaliation, just to see her wince.  
  
*  
  
“Draco.”  
  
Draco glanced up. He had been passing his mother’s bedroom door, but it had been shut, and he hadn’t seriously considered stopping. Now, it stood open, held by Affy from the other side, and Narcissa beckoned to him.  
  
“Yes?” Draco stepped inside, keeping his voice gentle but cold, and his distance from the bed.  
  
Narcissa looked at him, motionless, for long moments. She looked better than she had, her white hair shading more towards pale blond now, and the skin tighter on her hands. Still, Healer Bowman thought it would be a longer recovery period than this, most likely months more.  
  
“Potter is—a source of strength to our family,” his mother said slowly, as though her lips were made of granite.  
  
Draco stifled the urge to correct her about what Harry’s last name was now, and bowed. He knew the effort this had cost her. He could honor that effort without niggling about trifles. “Thank you, Mother.” He paused, and added, “So are you.”  
  
Her smile came and went, and then she turned her head away from him. Draco stepped out into the corridor again and continued walking, his heart lighter than it had been.


	45. To Take an Heir

“Well, I still hate Potions.”  
  
Ron snickered across the table from Harry, craning his neck as though he could see the list of activities Harry was making from there. “And Herbology and Astronomy probably wouldn’t be any good for you either, mate.”  
  
“Why does everything you’re thinking of need to be based on Hogwarts subjects?” Hermione demanded, pulling back her hair to glare at them. She was crouching over her own books, although Harry didn’t know exactly what legal case she was researching, just that it had to do with house-elves. “Choose something different, for God’s sake.”  
  
“Right,” Harry said, and scribbled down a few more words with a flourish. “Driver of a Muggle lorry, here I come!”  
  
“It would be a good thing if they  _did_ teach Muggle driving at Hogwarts,” Hermione said, and turned back to her books, making notes while she rambled on. Harry doubted that she had to listen to what she said at this point, she was so able to focus on two things at once. “Think of the ways that wizards could become comfortable with technology then. And maybe it would mean less of those calls that start up every few years to stop using the Hogwarts Express because some hidebound pure-bloods think it’s too Muggle.”  
  
“Yes, yes,” Ron said, and gestured at Harry with the apple core he held. “But we all know that you aren’t going to listen to Hermione’s nonsense, so what are you going to choose?”  
  
Harry hesitated and looked at the list again. Quite apart from the Hogwarts subjects bias that Hermione had mentioned, he wanted to do something that would involve lots of magic, the way being an Auror had.  
  
But he also wanted to do something that wasn’t as dangerous. It wasn’t just to content Draco, he’d reassured Hermione when he brought that up and she glared at him. For the first time, he was thinking about the future in detail, thinking there was more  _to_ the future than just chasing Dark wizards. Which meant he had to think about Teddy and the growth of the Malfoy family, all those things that he had promised Draco and Narcissa he would do.  
  
And he wanted to be alive to see Teddy grow up, whether or not he became the Malfoy heir. He wanted to spend time with Draco and see if Narcissa came anywhere close to accepting him. He wanted to  _be_ a part of the family.  
  
He shook his head a little, smiling. Draco had told him, somewhere back near the beginning of their marriage, that he was giving Harry a family to care about, something Harry had never had before. Harry had reacted indignantly at the time, because he remembered the Weasleys and how they had been willing to become his family not for the hope of gain or because they wanted him as an heir, just because they liked him.  
  
But yes, the Malfoys were family, and in a way that Ron wasn’t, as close as he was. The difference between a cousin and a husband, Harry thought.  
  
“Harry? You look like you’ve made a choice, but you just keep sitting there and staring at the bloody parchment instead of saying anything,” Ron complained as he took the last usable bite from his apple and tossed it away. Hermione tried to enchant it to float back and hit him in the forehead, probably as punishment for his language, but Ron batted it away with a charm, not taking his eyes from Harry. “Well?”  
  
“I want to use defensive magic,” Harry said. “That’s what I’m really good at.” He wondered if Draco would say that he was  _really_ good at those powerful bursts of magic and will that came about when he was saving someone else in his family, but he couldn’t control those, and he couldn’t imagine Draco or Teddy in danger every time he had to use magic. “So I was thinking about maybe apprenticing to a ward-maker.”  
  
That announcement actually got Hermione to throw her hands up and turn around, clasping them together as she beamed at him. “Harry, that would be  _perfect!_ ” she exclaimed. “That way, you wouldn’t have to depend on anyone else for entertainment, and you would have something creative to do that got you out of the Manor, and you could use defensive magic, but it wouldn’t be dangerous!”  
  
“Yes, that’s essentially what I was thinking,” Harry said dryly, rolling his eyes at Ron. Ron didn’t notice, he was so busy gazing in a besotted way at Hermione. Harry rolled his eyes again, both for Ron and for himself, because that was probably the way he looked at Draco, and leaned back. “Now I only need to start studying up on the magical theory I need. I understand it’s pretty extensive.”  
  
“You’ll do fine,” Hermione said, flipping a hand at him. “It’s the same theory behind Defense Against the Dark Arts.”  
  
“Says someone who hasn’t studied it,” Harry said flippantly, while his heart hammered just a little. He had to wonder what would happen when he started to study, whether it would make sense to him or not. He wasn’t the best or the brightest of the Aurors to come out of the current training crop, no matter what Hermione thought. He was just really determined and had some instinctive talent.  
  
 _What do you think being good at something is?_ asked a voice in the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Draco.  
  
Harry began to smile. Draco might not like or admire his decision at first, since it would mean they were spending less time together, but Harry thought that was all to the good. It meant they would appreciate the time more when they did have it.  
  
*  
  
“My aunt lives in a house like  _this_?”  
  
Harry shot Draco a quelling look, but Draco refused to be quelled. Oh, he supposed the house was nice enough, on one level. It wasn’t the Shrieking Shack, or the hovel that his Aunt Bellatrix had once shown him a picture of, explaining that it was where she and the Lestranges had lived when on the run from Aurors during the first war.  
  
But it was so small. And Draco could see rosebushes in the front garden, but no sign that house-elves had tended them. And there was a scattering of child’s toys in a path up to the door. Draco wondered whether the boy was neat enough to learn new habits this late in life.  
  
“Teddy is  _seven_ ,” Harry said, apparently having guessed Draco’s thoughts from the dismayed way he was looking at the toys. “Now shut up and follow me.” He walked up to the door and knocked.  
  
Draco muttered under his breath as he followed, but Harry reached back and pinched his elbow as the door swung open, hissing over his shoulder, “This is the house your  _heir_ lives in, too, so maybe you could remember that?”  
  
Draco had no time to answer, which Harry had surely planned out, damn him. Instead, Draco had to smile pleasantly at the woman in front of him, although she looked so much like Bellatrix it was difficult.  
  
“Aunt Andromeda?” he asked, offering her his hand. “I’m Draco Malfoy. Narcissa’s son.” It was a time-honored way to try and soothe tensions between distant kin who were meeting for the first time, to name the nearest relatives they shared in common.  
  
Closer to her now, Draco could see that this woman was no Bellatrix. Insanity hadn’t kept her face smooth, and neither had potions or creams. She had wrinkles leading up to her eyes and around her mouth. There were long streaks of grey in her heavy black hair. Only her eyes were the same, as deep and dark and brilliant as Draco’s memories.  
  
“I know that you’re Cissy’s son,” Andromeda said, after a few moments of studying him. Only then did she take his hand, but she flinched back from it and dropped it as soon as she could. She turned to walk into the house. “Come in, if you  _must_.”  
  
Draco stared at her back. He had thought he would be the one showing disdain or getting to be gracious and charming. It had never occurred to him that Andromeda might despise him for something his mother had done.  
  
A sideways glance at Harry showed Harry struggling to control his laughter. He caught Draco’s eye and spread his hands.  
  
“I told you that she didn’t care about pure-blood bollocks,” Harry muttered out of the corner of his mouth, and followed Andromeda.  
  
Draco had barely stepped into the dim house or had a chance to look around at the portraits on the walls and the way the wood had a fine sheen despite the lack of house-elves when a whirlwind blew around the corner and slammed into Harry. Draco nearly drew his wand before he remembered Harry’s warnings, and settled back with a wince and a grumble.  
  
“Uncle Harry!”  
  
The boy. It was the boy. Draco felt his breath catching in a way it hadn’t even when he had gone through the demi-marriage ritual with Harry. Of course, he had known Harry and thought of him as a husband, while he didn’t know this boy at all, and it was on him that the far future of the family might hang.  
  
He was a handsome boy, Draco had to admit, with Andromeda’s dark hair and eyes—and then, as Draco watched, his hair changed, becoming shaggier, and his eyes turned a vivid, beaming green.  
  
Draco blinked.  _A Metamorphmagus. Did I know that he was a Metamorphmagus?_  
  
From the silent look Harry sent him, that and the laughter in his eyes, Draco suspected Harry had explained at least once, and he hadn’t listened. He nodded to Harry and bent down to look at Teddy more closely. Teddy turned and stared at him, sticking one finger in his mouth.  
  
“This is your cousin Draco Malfoy, Teddy,” Andromeda said. Her voice could have come off a glacier, but luckily, so could the drink she handed Draco. Draco swallowed some, feeling the cubes butt against his teeth, and tried to moderate his stare a little. “And what did I tell you about chewing your nails?”  
  
Draco smiled despite himself. Harry could say that Andromeda didn’t care about pure-blood manners all he liked, but if she was trying to instill some sense of basic cleanliness into Teddy, she cared enough for Draco.  
  
Teddy sniffed and took the finger out of his mouth to answer. “Not to do it,” he said, and turned to Harry. “But Uncle Harry thinks that’s stupid, don’t you, Harry?”  
  
Harry cleared his throat with a cough. Draco thought he probably still wasn’t used to being appealed to in front of Andromeda, who after all was the boy’s guardian. “Well, I didn’t care much when I was your age, Teddy,” he said. “But I was growing up with Muggles who didn’t care about me, either.”  
  
“You were going to tell me about them!” Teddy said, and bounced up and down. “The fat one and the thin one and the fatter one!”  
  
Draco arched his eyebrows. That was more than  _he_ had ever heard out of Harry about the Dursleys. Thinking back on it, he wasn’t even sure that Harry had told him there were only three people in the family.  
  
Harry glanced back and forth between Andromeda and Draco as though hoping one of them would step in to rescue him, but Andromeda only shook her head. “I have some reading that I need to get through before tomorrow,” she said, reminding Draco that he had no idea what his aunt did every day, other than spend time with Teddy. “Why don’t you tell him the story, Harry? If you promised, then you should keep your word.”  
  
“Yeah, you should!” Teddy had changed his hair back to black again, to resemble Andromeda’s, and he was smiling up at Harry the way Draco had seen children smile who knew that they had an adult trapped and there was no getting out of it. “Grandmother always tries to raise me with  _decorum_. You should have it, too!”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but took Teddy’s hand. “You haven’t said hello to your cousin, yet,” he said.  
  
Teddy glanced at Draco. Draco didn’t see any fear in those eyes. At least Andromeda hadn’t prejudiced him against Malfoys, whatever else she may have said. Well, she wouldn’t have wanted to after Harry became a Malfoy, too.  
  
“Hi,” said Teddy, with a slight shrug, and then turned back to Harry. “We’re going outside, right?”  
  
“Even though we’ll need Warming Charms and Impervious Charms, right,” Harry said, and turned to Draco with an unfamiliar expression. It took Draco a minute to realize that Harry was asking for help to get himself out of this situation.  
  
Draco smirked at him. “Warming Charms and Impervious Charms coming right up,” he said, and drew his wand.  
  
He heard Andromeda’s sharp intake of breath a moment before he realized what must have caused it. He looked down at his wand, the basilisk wand, and back up at her, and shook his head. Andromeda flicked her eyes back and forth between him and the wand, and her own fingers grew a little tighter on her robe.  
  
“This is my wand, now,” Draco told her, voice as gentle as he could make it. “Maybe it’s Dark in a way, but it obeys  _me_. And it doesn’t really matter what kind of wood it’s made of, or what the core is.”  
  
“It’s  _Dark_?” Teddy shot away from Harry’s side as if propelled, landing in front of Draco and dancing up and down on the tiled floor, reaching out a hand. “That’s  _great!_  What is it? Can you do spells that send people flying away? That’s what  _I_ want to see.”  
  
“Teddy.” Andromeda’s voice was low, her eyes darting back and forth between her grandson and Draco. “I’m sure that Mr. Malfoy won’t want to demonstrate a spell like that for you. It’s too violent.”  
  
“I can show you,” Draco said, smiling at Teddy and hoping that didn’t count as open defiance of Andromeda’s will, which Harry had told Draco not even Harry could get away with. “But with fake people, not real ones. And we’ll have to go outside. I would destroy walls and chairs in here, and then where would you sit?”  
  
From Teddy’s expression, Draco was sure that he would willingly pay the price of a few chairs for the privilege of watching the basilisk wand at work, but he nodded and ran out the front door. His hair was already changing to pale blond when he popped his head back in and demanded, “Aren’t you coming?”  
  
“He’s not a bad boy,” Andromeda murmured, drawing her fingers across her face as though to wipe away tears. “Just—at that stage where everything forbidden is fun, and of course Dark magic is forbidden.”  
  
“I wouldn’t think any less of him,” Draco told her quietly. “I was the same way at that age myself.”  
  
“And I would have been if I knew about magic,” Harry added, because Andromeda had opened her mouth, and Draco doubted she was about to say anything complimentary about Draco being obsessed with Dark magic when he was seven. “I thought it was brilliant when Hagrid put a pig’s tail on my cousin.”  
  
Andromeda turned towards Harry, and put a hand out. Harry took it, and stood gazing back at her.  
  
“It would be all right?” Andromeda asked softly. “Even if he ends up as a Malfoy? Are you  _sure,_ Harry?”  
  
“I’m sure,” Harry said, and let her hand go with a little squeeze of her fingers. Draco had to smile. Harry being protective and reassuring to someone else was attractive, but Draco still didn’t like him touching anyone else for too long. “I did, and I’m all right.”  
  
“Are you  _coming_?” Teddy sounded as if he would leave them all behind for being boring adults if they didn’t join him soon.  
  
“Yes, that’s true,” Andromeda said, and squared her shoulders. She eyed Draco. “You’re different than what I expected from Cissy’s son. If my grandson became the Malfoy heir, it would be…not horrible, I suppose.”  
  
 _There’s a ringing endorsement._ But Draco kept his face smooth as he inclined his head. He understood how hard this was for someone who had thought she would never have contact with her relatives again, because he had felt a little like that when he first really  _realized_ there were relatives he’d never had contact with. “Thank you,” he said. “But we have a few years to think about that. He wouldn’t even be able to undertake some of the rituals he would have to perform until he’s ten.”  
  
“Because they’re Dark?” Andromeda looked at Draco as though she was reconsidering her reconsidered opinion.  
  
“Because they’re powerful,” Harry said. He’d apparently been doing some reading of his own in the books that Draco had left out on the table. “He’d have to have a mature magical core and be ready to use a wand. So probably closer to eleven.”  
  
Draco could see the way Andromeda relaxed. He smiled. That gave her four whole years to think about whether she wanted this for Teddy, and to get used to Draco. And perhaps to visit his mother. Who knew? Draco thought the visits might be good for his mother, giving her someone to associate with other than him and Harry.  
  
“Good,” Andromeda said, and chuckled when an impatient shout ripped back through the door. “Then go and show him the spells that make people fly.” She flicked Draco one more stare, silently warning him that he shouldn’t go  _too_ Dark, and stepped back into what Draco assumed must be the library.  
  
Harry tucked his hand under Draco’s arm. “Thank you,” he said under his breath. “You handled that well.”  
  
“She made it easier than I thought she would,” Draco said, taking his arm. “So did Teddy. And I think that you need to tell us both that story about your Muggles as soon as I finish showing off my spell to my little cousin’s satisfaction.”  
  
“Then we could be here all day,” Harry said, shaking his head. “He doesn’t get tired of things easily.”  
  
 _Good. Then he’ll draw all the details out of you._ Draco was sure Harry couldn’t make out all the plans behind his smile, but Harry gave him a suspicious look anyway as they stepped into the sunlight.  
  
Teddy, with blond hair and green eyes now, danced up and down under the small covering that Andromeda had reaching out from the side of the house. “Are you going to cast those charms or  _not_?”  
  
And Harry did, and they sat under the covering while Draco cast the spells that would create human-shaped dummies and then the ones that would make them fly. Teddy watched with a gaping mouth, clapped his hands, and laughed when the dummies landed and shattered on the far grass. Draco felt his own remaining nervousness, his doubts about taking Teddy into his family as his heir, melt and run away from him. A child with a slight affinity for the Dark Arts would do the family proud.  
  
 _A child like Harry._  
  
Draco glanced at Harry, and saw him leaning forwards in his chair, his eyes fixed on Teddy, but his body bent towards Draco, as if he never lost awareness of either of them as he sat there and absorbed the scene.  
  
 _Yes. This is what I want._  
  
*  
  
“You’ve changed your mind about apprenticing to a ward-maker?” Hermione let her cup fall onto the table as she stared at Harry. “Is it because the theory takes too long to learn? But I thought you were saying the other day that you had all the time in the world and you were going to spend a lot of time searching out the best books.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes as he leaned back enough that he could put his feet on the table. Ron glanced at him, daring him to do it, if his little eye-twitch was anything to go by. Harry grinned at him, and didn’t. He had enough problems with Hermione as it was. “I was talking about Teddy when I talked about years, Hermione. It would be years before we adopted him officially, because we would have to wait that long before he could stand the spells to bring him into the family. So Andromeda and Teddy and Draco should all be used to the idea by then, and maybe Narcissa will be speaking to me.”  
  
“You don’t sound as though you need any time to get used to it, mate.” Ron looked at him with a considering gaze as he picked up his own Firewhisky.  
  
Harry shook his head. “That’s because I  _don’t._ Draco and Teddy remind me of each other. I love them both. Of course I’ll be happy if they can live under the same roof and I don’t have to worry about Draco or me having children with someone else.”  
  
“But the job!” Hermione tapped her fingers on the table. “What about the job? What did you decide on, if you’re not going to be a ward-maker?”  
  
Harry smiled into his mug. He was thinking about the spells that he had watched Draco cast the other day, technically Dark in that they could be used to hurt. But so could the Blasting Curse, and the Levitation Charm, and even  _Alohomora_ if you did something like unlock a door that would fly open and slam into someone’s chest.   
  
“I think that it’s time someone besides the Ministry looked into spells and decided what separates Dark Arts from all the others,” he said. “In Britain, it’s just what the Ministry decides is illegal. But I know they have different definitions in Bulgaria, or they couldn’t teach them at Durmstrang. So I want to know. Is there any common thread between what all those different wizarding countries say? Or is it just illegality? Or something else?”  
  
“Then you want to be a sort of independent investigator?” Hermione stared at him. “What makes you think anyone would welcome that?”  
  
Harry laughed. “Well, I’m sure the Ministry won’t, but I’ve made my feelings about what  _they’ll_ say abundantly clear. What really matters to me is what will make me happy, and I think this will. And being the Chosen One has got to be good for something. It might as well be doing things that someone else would get arrested for.”  
  
Hermione still looked as though she’d like to ask him all sorts of questions about how it would work, but Ron reached out and patted her hand. “Leave it up to Harry, right?” he told her. “And then you can advise him when it all goes pear-shaped, the way it will.”  
  
Harry grinned at both his friends, and stood up. “I promised Draco I’d be back home soon,” he said.   
  
“Why?” Hermione gave him a searching look, and then flushed as Harry gave her a pointed one. “Right. Um, it was nice of you to come over, Harry.” She smiled and stood up, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “I’m glad that things are working out with Malfoy and Teddy.”  
  
“And Andromeda,” Ron said, looping an arm around Harry’s shoulders from the other side. “I thought she would be the biggest problem.”  
  
Harry grinned at him, and enjoyed himself for just a second, standing between his two best friends, who hadn’t abandoned him because he’d had to get married and become a Malfoy, who never would abandon him. “Well, she still might be, but I think the title of biggest problem in my life is Narcissa right now. She’s not horrible, but she hasn’t come around completely.” He shrugged. “At least she’s a bit younger now.”  
  
It took a few more reassurances and good-byes before his friends were ready to let him go, but finally, Harry could take a handful of Floo powder, cast it into the fire, and call, “Malfoy Manor!”   
  
Those were the words he had to use to get there, but inside his mind and heart, there was another.  _Home_.  
  
*  
  
Draco threw aside the book he’d been half-reading when Harry came stumbling out of the fireplace. He saw Harry glance up at him, eyes shining. “How did you know I would come out here?” Harry asked, wringing soot out of his shirt.  
  
“I had the elves shut the other Floos,” Draco replied, and then Harry was laughing, and Draco had caught him in his arms and was kissing him. Harry responded just as eagerly, curling a foot around Draco’s ankles to tug him closer.  
  
Draco took a deep breath in the middle of the kiss, pulling back to look at Harry, and Harry smiled at him, eyes deeper than ever, more beautiful.  
  
This man, the living, breathing man in Draco’s arms…  
  
He was what Draco had wanted. He had become someone Draco hadn’t envisioned when he first married him, but that didn’t matter. And he had made the Malfoys into something other than they had been, as well.  
  
And that was  _fine_. In all the old meanings of the word, delicate and shining.  
  
Draco took a deep breath and reached into his pocket. He saw Harry staring at him. Draco had asked him to come home so they could shag, or so he’d implied earlier. Harry stepped back, still staring as Draco took out what he’d been hiding.  
  
Draco had thought of lots of ways he could do this, but in the end, there was no right way but to hold out the box, the way he’d held out his wand and his hand and his life and his heart to Harry, and say, “Open it.”  
  
Harry opened the small lacquered box, and stared in equal silence at the ring inside it. A thick silver ring, Draco had chosen, with an emerald, because he had to, and a snake as the stone’s setting, also because he had to. The emerald bore the Malfoy crest.  
  
And Harry looked up, and his smile broke the silence to pieces, and Draco kissed him hard enough, he thought, to drive the imprint of his lips into Harry’s and the imprint of the ring into Harry’s palm as he picked it up, as Harry had already imprinted himself on Draco’s heart and life.  
  
They didn’t need to say  _yes_. It was already there.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
